Notes from a Former Virgin

by Emma Chastain

  Sunday, April 29

  Six hangout at Mom’s condo. Mom was levitating with happiness. She made us nachos and said, “I’m SURE you won’t touch the Coronas in the fridge,” then winked at us. “Limes are in the crisper,” she called as she went to her bedroom.

  “Why are you always complaining about your mother?” Noelle whispered.

  “Trust me, she’s awful,” I said.

  Monday, April 30

  Text from Noelle in the middle of chemistry.

  Noelle: Major news

  Get a hall pass and meet me by the North Wing stairs

  When I saw her, I said, “I almost got detention for looking at my phone in class.”

  “But you didn’t,” she said, not very patiently. “Listen, I saw Felix Nicholson this morning.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said. Felix is a shoo-in for the Most Class Spirit superlative. He’s the head of about 16 committees.

  “He told me something,” Noelle said. “Teachers aren’t picking prom king and queen this year. Students are voting on it.”

  “Why did they change the rules?”

  “Something about making our school more democratic in the name of giving us all an appreciation for democracy in general. But that’s not the point.”

  “What’s the point?”

  She looked at me like hello! “You’re running for junior prom queen.”

  “But I couldn’t run. It’s not like it’s a student council position.”

  “Oh my God, you’re so naive,” she said.

  She’s the only person left who has the nerve to insult me to my face. It’s annoying, actually. Doesn’t she realize who I am?

  Tuesday, May 1

  Six meeting at lunch. “Junior prom is just over a month from today,” Noelle said. “And it’s on a boat.”

  “It is?” Tris said.

  “Felix said so.”

  Everyone looked convinced. If Felix said so, it was on a boat.

  “But this is the interesting thing,” Noelle said, and told them about the prom king and queen change. We were in the cafeteria, leaning toward the center of the table, murmuring with our heads close together. I could feel everyone around us wondering what we were talking about.

  “The prom committee is announcing the rule change tomorrow,” Noelle said. “The way it works is, at least six people have to nominate a candidate by next Thursday. The juniors vote on the nominees the week before prom. It’s a paper ballot. So Tris, Hannah, and I will nominate Chloe, and I’ll round up three more votes. Now, obviously, Grady can’t run as prom king, since he’s not a junior, so I suggest we go with Tris.”

  “Oh!” Tris said, sitting up straight. “Really?”

  Hannah said, “What about Reese? She’ll run too, right?”

  “I’m sure,” Noelle said. “She’ll force Harper and Lianna and those guys to nominate her. And it’s not like she’s going to sit back and let Chloe win out of the goodness of her heart.”

  We all nodded soberly except for Grady, who was scraping hummus out of a little container with a baby carrot.

  “I have to tell you guys something,” Hannah said. “I got back together with Zach.”

  Everyone shrieked or gasped.

  “No!” Tris said.

  “But didn’t he—what about Reese?” Elliott said.

  Noelle was looking thrilled. “This is perfect. Have you already discussed prom?”

  “Yes, actually,” said Hannah. “I told him how devastated I was when he invited me to his junior prom last year and then wound up going with Reese, and he asked if he could make it up to me this year. Don’t you think that’s nice, that he doesn’t mind going to our prom, even though he’s a senior?”

  “Oh, Hannah!” I said. “No! I think he’s lucky you’re letting him come with you.”

  “I agree with Chloe,” Noelle said. “Stop feeling grateful.”

  Maybe if Hannah listens to Noelle and takes her advice, she and Zach will be OK this time around.

  Wednesday, May 2

  Chloe: I’m worried about Hannah

  I don’t trust Zach

  Grady: Yeah he’s trouble

  Chloe: He’d better make prom the most magical night of her life

  Grady: I hope not

  You don’t want to hit your lifetime magic high at prom

  Better to wait till you’re like 35

  Chloe: Are you talking about me?

  Grady: ?

  Chloe: I get the sense you think prom queen is lame

  Grady: I mean kinda

  Don’t you?

  Chloe: Yeah

  I don’t CARE about it

  It could be fun though?

  Good profile pic

  Me in a tiara

  Grady: I guess

  Chloe: Don’t rain on my parade

  Grady: I guess it would be cool if you won

  But I’ll love you either way

  Chloe: So you don’t think I’ll definitely win?

  Grady: CHLOE

  Chloe: What??????

  Thursday, May 3

  We were heading outside after school, yelling to each other and bouncing off the lockers. Hannah was showing Elliott something on her phone, and I maneuvered myself so that I was next to Zach, then tugged on his arm until he slowed down.

  “What’s up?” he said, smiling at me.

  “Hang on a sec.” I slowed down and let the others get ahead of us.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “Is everything OK?”

  “Fine!” I said. “I was just thinking we never really talk.”

  “True.”

  At that moment Nadia passed by going in the opposite direction and called, “Hi, Chloe!”

  “Hey!” I said.

  “You have a lot of fans these days,” Zach said.

  He probably expected me to say something modest, but instead I said, “Last year I was too unimportant for you to say hi to in the halls, and now look at us! I’m the one deigning to talk to you!”

  “Ha!” he said uncertainly.

  “So, listen, how’s it going with you and Hannah?”

  “Great. But I’m sure she’s told you all about it. I know how you girls love to gossip.”

  The September version of me would have giggled. The May version of me said, “I don’t need to gossip, Zach. I have spies everywhere.”

  He looked at me to see if I was joking or not. I didn’t smile. (I also didn’t tell him I was mostly thinking of Jacqueline. “Spies” sounds more sinister than “spy.”)

  “Wow, OK,” he said, and laughed nervously.

  “You really hurt Hannah last year,” I said. “I would hate to see anything like that happen again.”

  “No, I know, I—”

  “It would really upset me,” I said, turning to stare into his eyes.

  “I understand,” he said.

  I’ve never been so glad I overthrew Reese. I’m using my powers for good! I’m protecting Hannah!

  Friday, May 4

  It occurred to me that a nice person would nominate her best girlfriends for prom queen, and that also, I really don’t want to nominate Noelle and Hannah, because I want to win.

  I want to win.

  I wouldn’t tell even Grady that. It’s a relief to write it down here.

  I felt guilty enough that I asked Noelle if I should nominate her and Hannah, and she almost rolled her eyes out of her head. “Do you listen to anything I say? Don’t make my life harder than it needs to be.” Her annoyance was comforting. She’s always giving me permission to be selfish.

  Saturday, May 5

  It’s 68 degrees and the sun is shining. My mom wasn’t home last night, and Grady and I figured out this new thing where I kind of plank over him while he—it’s too X-rated to even write down, but it was so good, thinking about it now is giving me the shivers. I’m young! My skin is soft, my hair is shiny, and sometimes I’m so full of energy, I have to dance wildly in my room for a while so I don’t explode. And because of all of thi
s I CANNOT STAND being around Dad and Miss Murphy right now. They’re so slow and sleepy. They come into the kitchen yawning, releasing terrible grown-up morning breath into the air. They grab their lower backs and wince. They hunch over their laptops and say, “Open the link I just sent you—pretty sweet undercrib storage drawer.” It all makes me want to scream!!!!!!!!! I would rather feel angry and upset at Mom’s than cooped up and bored at Dad’s.

  Sunday, May 6

  I took Snickers out for a two-hour walk this morning so I could escape the house and also talk to Grady on the phone. When I got back, I was tired and a little sweaty, and Dad and Miss Murphy were sitting at the island drinking coffee.

  “You got up early,” Dad said.

  “Yep.” I walked to the sink to refill Snickers’s water bowl.

  “When you were little, you woke up at 5:30 a.m. on the dot. This was every day for three, four years,” Dad said. I turned back and saw that he was looking at me affectionately.

  I know there’s something wrong with me, because I didn’t think, Oh, how sweet; I thought, I’m not a baby anymore. I’m 16 and I’m getting laid constantly, so take your affectionate look and shove it in your undercrib storage drawer.

  Monday, May 7

  Of course, when I got back to Mom’s, the sink was full of dirty dishes, the recycling bin reeked of red wine, there was no food in the fridge, and Mom was out and hadn’t left me a note or texted me. It did make me feel almost scared for a second, but then I told myself it’s better this way. I don’t need parents. I need to be left alone.

  Tuesday, May 8

  Lianna came up to me in the hall and said, “I love your boots. I’ve been meaning to tell you that.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Where did you get them?”

  “I don’t even remember,” I said, because I didn’t want her rushing out and buying a pair. They’re my signature boots.

  She pressed her notebook against her chest. “I don’t know if you knew that Noelle and I are, like, really tight? Or used to be. We were best friends in junior high.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I miss her,” she said.

  “She’s the best,” I said. What did she want from me? She used to be friends with Noelle. Now I am. Maybe if Lianna hadn’t decided to serve a tyrant, she wouldn’t be in this position, but she had, and I didn’t feel obligated to help her.

  “I actually have to meet Noelle now, so . . .”

  “Oh, OK. Talk to you soon!” Lianna called as I walked away.

  Wednesday, May 9

  Noelle told me Lianna wants to come to prom with us. “It would look good,” she said. “A defector coming over to our side.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “She’s so annoying, though.” And she said “nice makeover” to me in the hall to humiliate me after I dyed my hair pink, I thought, but did not say out loud, because I wasn’t sure Noelle would consider that a good enough reason for me to resent Lianna for life.

  Noelle raised her eyebrows. “She was a million times more popular than you in September.”

  “It’s May now,” I said.

  We were sitting at the same picnic table where Reese had tried to find out if I was still a virgin. I’d been scared and freezing then. Now I was confident, and the sun was making my skin warm.

  “Lianna’s not coming to prom,” I said. “I don’t like the way she kisses up to me. It’s gross.”

  Noelle laughed.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing. You sound like Reese.”

  I waved my hand in the air, pushing the smoke from Noelle’s cigarette out of my face. “No, I don’t. I’m not excluding Lianna to make her feel bad. I don’t like her, that’s all.”

  Noelle looked away and didn’t respond.

  I’m nothing like Reese. It’s my right to choose my friends! I don’t have to pull in someone who used to be awful to me and only wants to hang out now because I’m a star.

  Thursday, May 10

  I officially got nominated for junior prom queen today. So did Reese and so did Izzy, the music theater geek/clarinet player. Junior prom king nominees are Tristan, Griffin Gonzalez, and Mark Philips. They read the list during homeroom, and everyone in my class clapped and whooped when they heard my name. I smiled and tried to look surprised.

  Friday, May 11

  The musical’s opening tonight; I’m going tomorrow. I wish I could skip it—it’ll be three hours of stewing in the dark, feeling jealous of the people onstage and sorry for myself—but I could never do something so rude and selfish to Hannah and Tris.

  Saturday, May 12

  Went to the show tonight. For the first 15 minutes I couldn’t stop wondering if everyone around me was staring at me and feeling sorry for me or even whispering about me (That’s Chloe Snow. She got the lead as a freshman, but I guess it was a fluke. She didn’t even try out this year), but holding Grady’s hand helped, and after a while I got absorbed in the show and stopped obsessing about myself. And Tris! Oh my God, Tris. He’s my best friend, but sometimes I think I don’t know him at all. How does he transform into other people like that? It’s like he’s not even inside himself, like the character he’s playing has sucked out his soul and is using his body as a shell. As Gomez Addams, he was dignified, soulful, in love with his wife. At moments when he was upset, he did this thing where he briefly closed his eyes and turned his head to the right. I’ve never once seen him make that gesture in real life. Everyone else was fine—Elliott was adorable as the dead caveman, and Hannah was good as a nonspeaking ancestor—but it was Tris’s show. I could barely get to him afterward to give him the flowers I’d brought, he was so mobbed by fans.

  I didn’t talk to Miss Murphy. She was mobbed too, and I don’t think she noticed me.

  Dad was there, of course, and he and Grady and I talked awkwardly for a few minutes while he waited for Miss Murphy. He offered us a ride back to Mom’s, but I said we had our bikes. After that it seemed like there was nothing to do but leave, even though I would have enjoyed hanging around for a while.

  When we got outside, the air was soft and the night seemed especially quiet after the noise of everyone yelling and congratulating each other in the auditorium.

  Grady put his arm around me and said, “You good?”

  I said yes even though my heart was hurting like a sprained ankle.

  “If you want to try out again next year, I’ll do it with you,” he said.

  “Maybe,” I said. I can’t think about it too much—the fun I would have had with everyone, the inside jokes and Tris hangtimes I missed, the fact that the cast has four more shows to look forward to. Planning to try out next year would mean admitting that I made a terrible mistake not trying out this year.

  Sunday, May 13

  For Mother’s Day, I gave Mom a generic card and made chicken salad for dinner. A pretty lame effort, but she seemed happy with it. While we ate, she talked for 45 minutes about Isla, this adorable and brilliant girl in the test-prep class she teaches. Apparently Isla and she really connect, and Isla stays after class to confide in her about her cheating boyfriend and her difficult parents. “Her mother sounds like a real piece of work,” Mom said, shaking her head. I rarely think about the drawbacks of being an only child, but in that moment I was dying for a sibling, someone to catch my eye across the table and make a tiny face that meant OMG, she has zero self-awareness.

  After the Isla soliloquy wrapped up, Mom said “What’s new with you?” in an uninterested tone, as if there couldn’t possibly be anything notable going on in my life. I hadn’t planned to tell her, but that was before she rhapsodized about some girl my age who she’s known for a few weeks but already loves more than me, and I found myself saying, “I got nominated for junior prom queen.”

  “You did?”

  I nodded.

  She poured herself more white wine. “Have you ever heard of a movie called Carrie?”

  “Of course. What, you think someone’s going to pour pig’s bloo
d on me?”

  “I’m just trying to understand how this happened.”

  I laughed angrily. “Is it so hard to believe that people at my school like me?”

  “I was well liked, Chloe, but I was never nominated for prom queen.”

  That’s probably because I’m a million times more popular than you were, I thought, but did not say.

  “Of course, you may not win,” Mom said, like she was comforting herself.

  Now I have to win. I have to see the look of sour shock on my mother’s face when I come home wearing a sash and carrying a bouquet of roses.

  Monday, May 14

  I was sitting in the kitchen doing homework when Mom got back from work. Right away, as she put her bag down, she said, “I was thinking about Carrie today.” It was actually tempting to stay there and let her provoke me into a froth of anger, pride, and defensiveness, but I’d promised myself I’d do two hours of phonebanking, so I said, “I have to call Hannah to discuss a group project,” and went to my room. I would never tell her about volunteering for Planned Parenthood. She’d be way too enthusiastic about it, and then she’d find a way to take credit for the whole thing. (“I’m so glad I insisted that you see Dr. Stauffer! I knew meeting a proper OB would change your worldview.”)

  Tuesday, May 15

  Six lunch in the clearing, because Noelle wanted to strategize and she thought we’d have more privacy there. It turned out to be crowded, so we sat on the ground behind some trees, which will probably make sitting on the ground behind some trees the new cool thing to do.

  “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, and I think we need to campaign without campaigning,” Noelle said. “That could backfire.”