Okay, first of all, my apologies to the... three separate people who got fooled by the site into thinking I'd updated sooner— I'm pretty sure it was a glitch making me stick to the top of the front page. Second of all, if Jasmine seems terminally stupid at the beginning of this, in her defense, 1960s sex-ed was... really not great :/


I had about enough to be getting on with, without having my second pregnancy scare before the age of eighteen on my hands. It took me a few moments to register exactly what had happened after it did, a wet spill on the sheets beside me, Bryon's flushed face, apologies coming off his lips. I really wasn't listening, I was too busy trying to assess how much damage control was needed.

It was only a little bit, I wasn't sure if it was enough to actually settle a baby inside of me. And according to the calendar my mama had taught me to keep, when I was around thirteen, I couldn't get knocked up anyway at this point in my cycle. Still didn't make me any less hacked off about it.

"You said you'd pull out." I hugged one knee to my chest, stretched the other leg out on the bed. I focused on the contrast between my tan lines and my pastier stomach, rather than focusing on him. "If you ain't gonna use a rubber, you better improve your sense of timing—"

"They're real expensive," he said as he tried to comb his mussed hair with his fingers, "they're the price of a single—" He looked genuinely apologetic, which was the worst part of this whole thing. "And it just don't feel as good with one on."

Christ, I was already bored of him— the tighter he tried to cling, the more I wanted to push him away. The attention I'd found flattering at the beginning of our relationship now felt like I was suffocating on chlorine gas. "I don't want to be no seventeen-year-old mother, Bryon."

I just didn't want to be that girl, either, demanding, nagging, always running my mouth— it wasn't like my love life was much of a success story, the way I'd been handling things before. I wasn't stupid, either— if I didn't put out, I was well-aware that it would send Bryon running for the door. It surprised me that he'd wanted to wait this long at all to start doing it, most guys on the East side, they'd move on if their dick wasn't wet by the end of the week, and that was the halfway-respectable kind. Maybe nice, clean Cathy Carlson had gotten to him.

"You're real—" He rubbed the back of his neck like he was scraping rust off a pan, and in the few seconds before he picked the sentence back up again, my heart lurched. "You can... loosen up, you know, make some noise? None of the other girls I've been with—"

I could've told him he was no Dallas Winston himself, who'd had plenty of experience and ego tied up in making women happy, or even Curly, who had no experience at all but made up for it with clumsy enthusiasm, but my tongue twisted in my mouth. I tried to imagine this other string of girls and then immediately shut down that train of thought. "Well, no one else ever complained, so—"

"Hey, wait, I didn't mean it as no criticism— it's not like girls have to be good at anything." He put his hand on my upper arm, maybe comforting, maybe restraining, depending on his mood. "I mean, did you hate it? Apart from... you know."

I didn't hate it. "I just don't like it much," I demurred, and that felt pretty satisfactory to me. A lot of girls just didn't like it much, hell, if I'd ever listened to anything my mama said, I wouldn't have liked much to begin with. After all, at the end of the day, it was for your boyfriend, for the two of you to feel closer.

Not that I felt any closer to Bryon. The world blurred in front of me again, distant and syrupy, and I was tired of this, I was so fucking tired of this. I pinched the skin on my upper arm just to stay a little more connected to reality, then swung my legs over the side of the bed and groped around on the floor for my clothes. I needed to change the sheets. "You oughta go home. Darry's got a bad habit of comin' back in before he says he'll be."

"... I'll see you later, yeah?" Despite being so much larger than me, brushing up against six feet if he hadn't already shot past it, he still seemed as small and insecure as a child. He swept closer to me, brushed a lock of sweaty hair behind my ear; my skin crawled, like I'd just noticed an ant that needed to be flicked off. "You ain't mad or nothin', are you?"

Maybe I was just born for the stage or something, because I managed to get out a convincing "yeah, I'll see you," even half of a smile as weak as the sun behind stormclouds. He kissed me, wet and open-mouthed, and I tried to convince myself that I liked it, liked him, until he pulled away. I waited for him to be gone, get his car out of my driveway, before I finally went into the bathroom and indulged in a few sad dry heaves over the toilet.

I was doing everything right. Good grades and not sneaking out and a boyfriend my brothers didn't hate and a steady job, I'd reformed myself, I was back on the right path. So what the hell was still so wrong with me, that I just couldn't manage to exorcise, no matter how hard I tried?

Then I realized what the problem was. I should've probably knocked back a drink or two before I got down to business. I wasn't so used to doing it sober.


My first shrink had one helluva crush on me. And I was too dumb to notice until during our third session, he got one of my curls between his fingers, rubbed it, and asked me if I felt like discussing this further at his house over a glass of sherry. The idea that he probably beat off in the shower to the halting details I'd disclosed, I think, qualifies as the very definition of 'adding insult to injury'.

I actually had enough sense to tell Darry, who proceeded to raise so much unholy hell that the receptionist offered me a half-off deal, if only he didn't file a lawsuit or shoot the place up. My second shrink, I just decided to give it to him straight, lay all my cards out on the table. "Well, my brother and my social worker think that I need to see someone, to talk about all of my issues," I started out with a slow, sweet smile. "My parents died last year in a car wreck, and then I was raped at a party the night of their funeral. Then, uh, I started goin' steady with one of my brothers' shadier friends, and we started sellin' drugs with his friend's sister because we were kind of bored? We were doin' that for a while, until I told her uncle that she had a pimp and started a gang war, and her pimp put out a bounty on my head and kidnapped me so he could rape and kill me. Then my kid brother got caught up on a murder charge and after all that my boyfriend committed suicide by makin' cops shoot him." I leaned back in the chair, looked him dead in the eye. "I drink a lot, too, for someone my age. And I do barbs sometimes. Is that a real serious problem?"

I can't even blame him for not taking this too well. It sounds completely absurd written down, I wouldn't have believed me either. He made the appropriate humming noises, scribbled some things down on his clipboard, then laid it all on Darry. I was clearly hypersexual, though that wasn't uncommon for girls with my... particular ethnic background. I was also a compulsive liar, he was a bit 'troubled' by how I could spin these stories without a moment's hesitation. Had Darry considered signing me up for a course of electroshock therapy at Brookhaven? It might do wonders.

Darry was cussing him right until security hauled him back out the front door. "I'm not so sure this was a good idea, Jas," he finally said once we were back in the car, in the understatement of the year. "These quacks, they just don't seem to know the score around here."

I knew what he wanted to say, though he wouldn't— we couldn't afford to have a shrink on retinue, either for me or for Pony, even with a discount. We weren't quite bad off enough to qualify for Medicaid and though Dad had enrolled us all in the tribe, even if Indian Health covered one, he'd probably just offer to lobotomize me with an icepick and call it a day.

"I mean, you're fine, ain't you." Darry said it as half a plea, put one of his big hands on my thigh and gave me a squeeze I knew he considered reassuring. "You're okay now."

It was the beginning of spring at that point, maybe mid-March, the little snow we'd had already melting into crocuses and daffodils. I'd broken up with Curly and slammed Angela's head into the concrete in front of half the school. Sylvia came over for sleepovers sometimes, and more and more often these days. My GPA was a 3.7 and I wasn't in any real trouble after the fight and Margaret said I could have my old job back that summer. I was raised by a daddy from New Mexico and a mama from the heartland of Texas, but I still had enough Midwestern in me that I was uncomfortable spilling my guts to a perfect stranger, about all of the bad things that had happened to me.

I twisted my skirt in my hands and forced myself to smile. I knew what he wanted to hear, my trust in the psychiatric industry was at an all-time low, and if I'm really being honest, I wanted to convince myself too. "Yeah. I'm okay."


I should've realized that Angela and I would cross paths again, eventually— Tulsa was a decent-sized city, but we frequented the same haunts, Buck's, the Ribbon, back streets and dimly-lit parking lots. Even if we never did in the physical sense, it wasn't as if I'd ever be able to forget about her. That theoretical knowledge, though, didn't help the sharp jolt in my stomach when I saw her, like I'd just fallen from the roof of a tall building and hadn't yet reached the ground.

Her hair was the first thing that caught my attention— she was walking around with a cut like Audrey Hepburn's for a while, but it had grown out to the chin-length of a flapper's and she paired it with a headband, too, something I would've thought was too Soc to find its way into her closet. She'd lost weight on an already thin frame, and her eyes were sunk deep into their sockets as she surveyed the scene, for once not flanked by any of her girlfriends. I didn't want to worry if she was back on the heroin— Tim, despite her furious squawking, used to roll up her sleeves and check for track marks, but he'd been gone for several months now and I was all the same. Even with Joe in prison, that old avenue eliminated, she had more than enough access, if she put her mind to it.

"... Was he that bad?" Evie's voice wafted into my ears, I turned my head back towards her again. Her blue minidress rode up on her thighs as she sat down on the hood of her souped-up Chevy— she had a real tuff ride, courtesy of Steve's irresistible urge to steal and tinker with them.

When I didn't answer fast enough for their liking, Sylvia pinched some of the skin on my upper arm. I yelped and gave her an indignant look. "You said you'd tell us about it, 'stead you're just starin' off into space." Contrary to popular perception, girls' bull sessions not only exist, but are a hell of a lot more detailed and scathing than guys'— I'm still scarred from the time I found Tim Shepherd has a masive cock scrawled on a shower stall in the locker room. Wrinkles shaped like twin commas settled between her eyes, as she surveyed me again. "Was he that—"

I blinked hard to get back into the moment. "We—" I almost said he, it would be closer to the truth— "didn't use a rubber."

Evie fixed me with a surprisingly hard look, the kind I'd seen her use on her kid brother, then passed me the flask of cinnamon whiskey she'd stolen from her stepdaddy's liquor cabinet. "Are you stupid?"

I let a sip burn its way down my throat. Holy hell, would this be awful to throw up. "Not sure how much I want to answer that."

"Sorry," she said, not sounding very sorry at all. She and Steve really were a match made in heaven. "But are you fucking stupid? You know what they call a guy who pulls out? Daddy."

"Don't make me feel worse than I already do—"

I didn't want to admit the truth to them. That I hadn't insisted he wrap it up because I didn't want to know what would happen if he forced the issue.

"You're gonna feel a hell of a lot worse if you're knocked up," Sylvia helpfully cut in. "Thought you had more sense than some Catholic school broad— or Angel Shepard, though I don't see much of a difference." She snatched the flask out of my hand. "Well, I mean, guess you gotta get married sooner or later—" I stuck my tongue out at her. "Promise Auntie Sylvia is at least gettin' a middle name in there, if it's a girl?"

I should've expected Angela's head to swivel around when she heard her name mentioned. She strolled right up to us, a cigarette between her fingers, like she didn't have a care in the world. "Yeah, Bryon's like that," she said after a drag. "You better watch out, before he gets you in trouble too."

"Angel, hey," Sylvia said with such a fake, high-pitched sweetness that it made my ears hurt. "You look great— you know, the baby weight, it just melted right off. I heard it's easier for young mothers to snap back into shape."

Between attacking Pony, who'd been a real celebrity at school ever since the stabbing, and getting knocked up at fifteen, Angela had become as much of a pariah as 'Slutty Sandy' before her— and Sylvia had never been known for her subtlety. Evie didn't bother to say anything, but her disdain was obvious from the way she curled her upper lip. Angela ignored them both, turning to me. "We should talk."

I half-rotated my shoulders towards Sylvia and Evie; they watched me, waiting for my signal. "Just give us a minute," I said, surprising even myself as I waved them aside. "I want to hear what she has to say."

They shot each other some pretty meaningful looks, but they listened to me all the same, shifted on over to another group of girls— leaving me and Angela alone for the first time in months, since I told her to get rid of it. I hated the sight of her, everything about her, especially her certainty that I would forgive her. Especially the fact that I already had.

I couldn't have bit back the cattiness even if I'd tried, when I broke the silence between us, and I wasn't really. "Your husband know you're out so late?"

Even with all of her tough talk, every trauma she'd been through, there had been something faintly ridiculous about Angela, an overwrought theatricality to a kid her age playing the femme fatale. Now she looked halfway to being a woman in her tired resignation, and I was shocked to find something I'd never seen on her face before: defeat. "Jas—" She pinched the bridge of her nose. "I'm sixteen, Rafa ain't got no job, and my mama still won't talk to me even though she had three half-Mexican kids outta wedlock. How much more of a pound of flesh do you want to take off me?"

I'd heard the accusation before, more than once. That I had a bad temper, a mean mouth. That I lashed out first and asked questions later. The sin of wrath personified. I didn't see it as such a bad thing. Angela had hurt my brother, which gave me the right to hurt her right back.

"I'm tired of feelin' sorry for you." All I did was feel sorry for Angela, and I hated myself for feeling the tiniest bit of satisfaction too, that after all her scheming she was stuck living in a shitty apartment with some shitty, deadbeat man, running away from her mama just to turn into her. "That don't excuse what you tried to do to Ponyboy. You could've gotten him killed, all because he hurt your pride."

She just raised an eyebrow, and I knew she saw right through me. The truth was that our friendship didn't fall apart because she'd gotten one of Tim's goons to glass Ponyboy, she hadn't even managed to do that right. The truth was that she reminded me of things I desperately wanted to forget.

But like her or not, she still felt like my responsibility. Who else did she have? She couldn't even scrape up a couple members of her former entourage to hang out in a parking lot. "Your husband, is it real bad with him?" I asked begrudgingly. "He don't slap you around or nothin', does he?"

"He don't hit me," she said, cutting her eyes to the side, "Jesus, you think Tim wouldn't have put him in a shallow grave by now if I was walkin' around with Irish sunglasses? I don't need your fussin', all he used to do was show up at my place and ask how's school, Angel, does that sack of shit you married treat you right, Angel, are you goin' hungry, Angel, you're too thin— I ain't exactly lookin' forward to him comin' back from Juárez."

From her voice, it was obvious she was looking forward to it immensely. "Then why are you here? What do you want?"

She shrugged, and the gesture made her look even smaller and more vulnerable— all her bluster belied the fact that she was barely over five feet tall. And then I didn't want to hear her apologize, or admit the truth, that she was desperately lonely, though she was unlikely to do either. "Let me get you a drink," I said. "Syl and Evie will understand."


I didn't remember how we'd ended up in Angela's apartment, only that somehow we had. Buying 'a' drink had turned into several, and by the time we stumbled up the three flights of stairs to their walk-in and she'd managed to turn her key in the lock, I was barely standing upright, clutching her arm and cackling at nothing in particular— "shush, before you wake the neighbors up," she tried to command me, but she was laughing too hard herself to get the words out.

The place was ugly and impersonal, with cottage cheese ceilings and industrial carpeting on the floor, none of the decoration Angela had even put up in her old room— when she turned on the light, I swore I saw a cockroach crawl under their weatherbeaten couch, so fast I thought it might've been a figment of my imagination. She tugged me into their bedroom. "Where's your husband, he ain't in yet?" The word still sounded so ridiculous to me. "He gonna wonder what's up with us?"

"He ain't home, he never is," she said in a dreamy, disconnected voice. "Probably out sniffin' after some other girl, and he won't bring her back here. To his sixteen-year-old wife." Their marriage bed was unmade as she tumbled into it, the sheets worn. Her gaze turned unusually soft, pleading. "Stay?"

I didn't have the heart to refuse her, and Darry was pretty good at letting me and Pony stay out on the weekends— I collapsed beside her on another flat pillow, my head spinning like I was on a county fair ride once I closed my eyes. "When you lost the baby." It was only alcohol that made me so bold; I cupped an imaginary stomach protrusion with my hand. "Was it real bad?"

"Yeah," she said quietly, with about as much genuine emotion as I'd ever heard her express, "it was terrible." She squeezed my hand tighter. "Rafa's mom, she had to get a doctor... I was in bed for a week, his kid sisters slipped me 'get well soon' cards under the door. I never wanted that baby to begin with... but I dunno, I guess I ended up gettin' attached. Thought maybe someone would love me... every baby's supposed to love their mama, right." She let out a breathless snort. "I was so fuckin' stupid. Like I ever loved mine like that."

Lying next to her, close enough to hear each other's heartbeats, it was more intimate than anything I'd ever done with Bryon. "I never thought I could feel lonely," she continued. "My whole life, I've gotten mine and to hell with everyone else... I figured I could shut the hormones off like a light switch this time too, if I tried hard enough, but it don't work like that. I hate it here, hate livin' in this lousy apartment with my old man who's too Catholic to divorce me— but it's still better than livin' with my mama, you dig? I'm just... stuck."

"Yeah, I dig," I said, and I knew it was true as I turned over onto my side and inhaled the clean scent of her hair. I was already falling asleep, my eyelids heavy, our hands still clasped. "You just can't move on. I dig."