She was the daughter of a devoutly Catholic couple and every Sunday I would see her at church, dressed in a clean dress and newly polished shoes sitting between them in the second pew. My family sat nearer to the back, but I always managed a clear view of her hair—blonde and falling to her shoulders in a mess of curls. One time we sat directly behind them. That was when I first realized that her hair smelled like raspberries.

I was older than she was by almost four years. We weren't in the same classes at school or in the same after school activities or in the same circles of friends. Outside of church, I rarely even remember seeing her. Maybe we'd pass each other in the hallway or see each other at a town function. I doubted she even knew my name, though I knew hers.

Mallory Powell.

I can't even remember when I noticed her, just that I began thinking about her more and more. On the outside, she looked like your typical all-American girl: silky blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, rosy cheeks which stood out among her pale skin, wearing clean and perfectly pressed clothing that never seemed to dirty or wrinkle. I thought she was like that, one of those sweet as apple pie girls that you bring home to meet your parents. In real life, though, she was far different. She was the kind of girl who wanted to rebel against he parents' moral living and strong faith. She wanted to shock them and anger them and show them that they weren't the boss of her. She wanted to dispel her goody-goody image in every way possible.

The problem was that it was almost impossible for her to rebel against them in our town. We lived in a small, church-going town in Connecticut. It was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone's business, where store owners frowned at people who bought hard liquor, and where the most scandalous news that hit was that someone's mother had bought treats for the school bake sale rather than making them from scratch. The police in our town rarely dealt with anything more than speeding tickets and other vehicular violations and when they did it was usually an "out-of-towner" causing trouble.

Mallory hated our town. She wanted to live a wild life of parties and booze and men…lots of men. She wanted to wear clothing that her mother hadn't sewn from a pattern book and wear more make-up than she needed and cut her luscious curls in favor of something radical, like spiked purple hair. She wanted piercings in places that needles really shouldn't go unless you were getting a shot from the doctor and tattoos that wouldn't rub off with water. She wanted to sleep in on Sundays instead of waking up for 9:00 am mass.

I don't think she wanted those things for their own sake; I think she wanted them because it was everything her parents were against. She loathed them so. She loathed the fact that they wanted a certain life for her, a life they had already planned from birth to death. It was her only way to break free.

I was twenty-one and getting my masters MIT when we first really spoke. She was eighteen, a recent high school graduate. She was headed for Columbia, just as her parents had hoped.

"MIT," she said, catching sight of my shirt. We were standing in line at the corner street deli waiting to be served. "You're that boy genius."

I blushed. News of my acceptance into MIT at the tender age of sixteen had been big news in our town. I was something of a celebrity, not that I had been around much to enjoy my fame.

Mallory was fascinated by the fact that I was a college boy. It didn't matter which college or what my major was or even how old I was. What mattered was that I had gone to college, lived away from my parents and by my own rules (though, truth be told, my own rules were similar to my parents' rules). This, in her eyes, made me worldly and experienced. It made me mature and interesting. It made me worthy of her attention, attention I was flattered to have.

We started seeing each other here and there. I don't know if she ever told her parents about me, though I doubt they would have minded. I was a gentlemanly, well-raised young man who went to Church and who was bound for success. I was the kind of boy they dreamed their daughter would meet.

Most of our dates consisted of grabbing coffee at the local coffee shop. She told me her parents thought she was too young to drink coffee, so she drank it even though she hated the taste of it. When she kissed me, her mouth tasted of cheap wine and stale cigarettes, though I never saw her drink or smoke.

"You're a virgin," she said very matter-of-factly one day as we were lying in my room watching television. My parents had gone to visit Sarah who was away at summer camp so we had the house to ourselves.

I wasn't sure whether to deny or admit to the claim. I knew I couldn't lie to her. "How can you tell?"

"I'm psychic," she joked with an impish smile before kissing me on my lips. "Do you wish you weren't a virgin?"

I hadn't thought about it much. Sure, I wanted to eventually lose my virginity, but it wasn't something I wanted to become obsessed with. "Sometimes," I admitted. "But only when I meet the right girl."

"And who is the right girl?"

I shrugged.

"Waiting until marriage?"

I shrugged again.

She leaned closer, her lips right beside my ear. I could feel her warm breath against my skin. "Well, I think we should make a man out of you."

I knew I should have been insulted by her comment. After all, I was as man as anyone my age, virgin or not. But it was hard to feel insulted when you have a spry girl straddling your body and kissing you while her raspberry-scented hair falls into your face and tickles your nose. When your body is enjoying something and your Id takes over your mind, it's difficult to fight it.

She unzipped my jeans and giggled at the sight of my erection. She told me she was pleased to know she'd had that effect on me. I didn't say anything, but I honestly think I would have had an erection if almost any woman were kissing my body and stroking my thighs.

Despite me being the older, she was obviously the more knowledgeable and perhaps more experienced of us two. She took control of the situation, removing the clothing, situating her body, initiating the penetration. I only had to lie there and let her do the work. She didn't seem to mind, though.

"We shouldn't be doing this," I murmured. Thoughts of our parents with disappointment reading on their faces ran through my mind. I didn't attempts to stop her though.

"Where's your sense of adventure?" she asked with a pout. "A little teenage rebellion is good for the soul."

I didn't feel it pertinent to point out that I was no longer a teenager and, therefore, beyond any phase of teenage rebellion. Besides, I knew what she meant. Sometimes it was okay to not do what was expected of you.

She pulled down her own underwear—I noted it was a white and red polka-dotted thong—and tossed them to the side. She still wore her skirt, so her nether regions were hidden from my sight, but when she lowered herself down onto me, I felt her. I felt the hairs as they tickled my penis, already sensitive to touch, and I felt the moisture emanating from deep within her vagina. She slid herself down easily as though she'd been doing it for years. Feeling a tightness around my penis that didn't come from my own hand was a shock to me and I closed my eyes in ecstasy.

"See?" she said teasingly, letting her well-manicured fingers walk up my bare torso. "I told you it was good for the soul.

I groaned in response. She laughed.

I would never forget that tryst of ours. Not only was it my first time having sex; it was my first time doing something I knew my parents wouldn't approve of, my first time throwing caution to the wind for my own selfish pleasures.

We only saw each other a couple more times before she went to Columbia and we never repeated what we had done that day in my bed. She admitted to me on our last date that it had been her first time too and that she had wanted to lose her virginity before going off to college. "You know how guys can be," she said as she nibbled on her pizza. "Especially stuck-up New York college guys. They don't want to have to teach a virgin how it's done."

I actually didn't know any guys like that, but I kept my mouth shut. It wasn't worth arguing over.

I never saw her after that. I wrote to her a few times and received no replies. I later found out that she had been kicked out of Columbia due to poor attendance and failing grades. She had to return home to her shamed parents and attend community college. I also found out that she ended up pregnant from an unknown source. She was sent away to live with an aunt in Nebraska for the term of her pregnancy. The very last I heard she'd split for New York, cutting off all connections with family and friends. One person claimed he saw her working a street corner in a seedy part of the city, but no one ever saw her after that.

As I went through life after my brief summer with Mallory, I kept her and my "teenage rebellion" tucked away in the back of my mind. I realized that she had been right to an extent. Sometimes a little rebellion was good for the soul; sometimes the end justified the means. This was a concept further enforced on me when I joined Gibbs' team. The difference between Mallory and Gibbs was that she couldn't see when a little rebellion became too much rebellion.

Going by the book has its time and place.

Then again, so does throwing caution to the wind.