Tom Cantwell is waiting for me outside The Pit when Harvey locks the place up for the evening. Tom wants to screw me. He’s a virgin. And my friend. I don’t do friends (another rule). Virgins, on the other hand? My specialty.
“Night,” I call over my shoulder at Harvey, who is already strapping his helmet on and mounting his Trek. (He doesn’t own a car, only the most awesome bike known to man.) He throws me a courtesy wave and vanishes.
I turn to Tom. “What’re you doing here?”
He stares into space and kicks his stumpy BMX’s front tire, which is underinflated, as I unchain the Schwinn. “Nothing,” he says.
I roll my eyes, straighten up and, with a sigh, say, “Not this again.” The whole lack-of-screwing thing has driven a wedge between me and Tom, one of the few people in town I can count as a friend.
“What?” he says with mock confusion, as if screwing me wouldn’t dial down the tension between us.
“You know very well what.” I get the Schwinn going (admittedly slowly, since I’m not really trying to flee him).
“Maybe I do,” he says coolly, following me in a nice straight line, his bike upright and all business as I sway mine playfully from side to side.
“I told you my policy.”
He snorts. “What if I hated you, like them?” he says, the word them sounding as if it’s infested with maggots.
“What if?” I shake my hair in the breeze, pretend not to care.
He buzzes ahead of me, waits for me to catch up. “Your policy is dumb,” he says. “I mean, it’s dumb that you have a policy.”
As I go to pass him, he cuts me off and skids to a halt, forcing me to stop too. Barely. I dig my toes into the dirt and say, “Can we change the subject?”
I pause long enough to really look at Tom (not my usual M.O.), something about the way his pale eyes shimmer in the setting sun weakening my defenses.
Another thing seducing me is the aching strum of cricket wings bowing against one another, their songs consuming the early autumn air. It’s been nine years since my parents dumped me (quite literally) on Gramp’s stoop in their harried rush to catch a midnight flight to Uganda. I stopped sensing the crickets seven years ago.
But tonight they return. “Do you hear that?” I say, my voice tinged with awe.
Tom cocks his head, strains as if he’s listening across a great distance. “Hear what?”
I rock my bike closer to his until we’re side by side, near enough to touch. “The crickets,” I whisper. “They’re singing.”
He chuckles faintly, leans in and says, “Yes, they are.” Awkwardly he lays a hand on my arm. Then, with supreme boldness, he kisses me, his lips as moist and warm as I’ve ever imagined any boy’s.
It’s my first time.
Love Over Matter
by
Maggie Bloom
Sixteen-year-old Cassie McCoy would do anything to contact George—her best friend and secret crush—beyond the grave, including dabbling in dark magic. But her “powers” are stuck in neutral. Everyone is on her case to move on with her life. And there’s a lot she never knew about George—or so says a mysterious, familiar-looking stranger, who may not only be the key to George’s hidden past but, if the storm clouds align just right, the means of delivering Cassie’s bittersweet goodbye.