Disclaimer: Don't own anything you recognise.
AN: No idea how this one hit me, but it did. The bolded parts are taken from the book.
"It's that boy, isn't it? The one you were talking to on Wednesday when I picked you up."
"What boy?" Simon asked from the backseat, already starting to laugh.
"Be quiet," said their mother, but she answered anyway. "Chris, the fencing captain. He is the captain, isn't he?"
Mallory grunted noncommittally. Her mother could not be further from the truth and Mallory was not about to enlighten her. Mallory HAD been talking to Chris and she did like Chris as a friend, but it wasn't Chris she was interested in. No the person she was…obsessed with was entirely wrong on so many levels.
The first thing wrong was age difference.
Mallory Grace was in love with someone who was finishing COLLEGE for God's sake! Someone who was far too old for her, well beyond Mallory's years. And although Mallory considered herself mature for her age, she was well aware that her crush probably saw her as just a little kid.
The second problem was, to put it bluntly, was the whole issue of sex.
Mallory was by no means an expert, but if all the movies she'd seen told her one thing, it was that by the time most students were in college, they had already had sex or were having sex and Mallory was pretty sure that at the age of thirteen, she wasn't ready for sex. The fact that movies were of questionable value managed to pass Mallory by, but never the less, it was one of Mallory's worries.
The third and in Mallory's opinion, the one that confused her more than anything, was the fact that the subject of her crush was a girl.
More specifically, she was falling head over heels in love with Chris's older, more beautiful, more sophisticated and infinitely more intelligent older sister Claire, with her short blond hair and twinkling blue eyes and perfect lips that she wanted to kiss and…
Fortunately nobody knew she was crushing on a girl and a much older one at that. Her mother and brothers thought she was crushing on Chris thankfully (although it did embarrass her when her mom gave her motherly advice in the wrong direction) and she certainly didn't like hearing her brother Simon sing "Mallory and Chris, sitting in a tree…" but compared to how badly she was sure that they'd freak if they knew the truth, she was at least grateful for their misunderstanding.
AN: I'm pretty sure that Mallory's parents and brothers would have come around to the idea of her liking girls, but this is mostly from Mallory's perspective.