Firsts by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn Page A

a round two. I guess Trevor kept his mouth shut about that, a fact for which I’m very grateful. And as he’s heading out the door, he blows me a kiss.
    “Good luck,” he says.
    “I think you mean good-bye,” I say. He just shrugs.
    When he’s finally gone, I wash my sheets immediately and spray perfume around the room to get rid of his scent. But even though his cologne leaves with him, the unsettling feeling in the room doesn’t. It only gets worse after he leaves, when I sit at my desk chair pretending to work on yesterday’s chemistry homework. I try to lose myself in facts, a strategy that usually works. But tonight it doesn’t, and instead I want the unlikeliest distraction of all.
    I want my mom. I want her to tell me everything is going to be okay, that I’m being paranoid for nothing. I want her to tuck me in like she never did when I was a little girl because she always had somewhere else to be. Right now, I’d even settle for her acting like her irresponsible self. Anything to make me feel less lonely. But I’m alone in the house, the victim of another hastily scrawled Post-it note. Out tonight!!! Love, Mom .
    I remember her sobbing over a martini one night, her sooty black eye makeup running into the fine lines on her face. “The people you love and need the most never need you back,” she had wailed, sloshing the contents of her drink all over my bunny pajamas. She was talking about some guy, but maybe it was the most honest advice my ten-year-old self could hear.
    I look at my lamp and count backwards to stop the tears collecting in my eyes from turning into actual crying. I don’t know why today is any different than any other day, why number twelve has made me question everything. I don’t know what I wanted from him that he didn’t give me.
    So I do the only thing I know to put Juan Marco Antonio firmly in the past. I open my notebook and write a giant zero beside his name. Number twelve. I fight back momentary panic as I flip through the pages before this one. Twelve sounds awfully high. Good thing I’m done, or this notebook would run out of pages entirely. I tap out a pattern with my pen, something that starts quiet and gets increasingly louder. I don’t want to write anything else, but I write everything else anyway. Everything I would never say out loud. Not to anybody.
    Douche bag. Total dick. Why did I sleep with this guy? I didn’t even want to.
    I stare at the words until my eyes hurt. I didn’t even want to . My handwriting doesn’t even look like mine, not the neat, orderly little letters that grace my lab reports. These letters are big and loopy and out of control. What’s wrong with me?
    He needs a nickname, a way of being put in the past. Then I can turn the page, close the book, and forget about him, same as I have with everybody else. So I give him one that fits, one that puts the control back where it belongs: with me.
    Don Wannabe.

 
    11
    The morning after Don Wannabe, I’m feeling especially on edge. I don’t put on any makeup and I throw my hair up in a messy bun. I don’t want anybody to notice me today. I just want to blend into the background, be part of the scenery. It helps that I have something else to think about besides Number Twelve. Today I’m meeting with the other person I’m tutoring for Students Helping Students. I’m both nervous and excited and surprised to be either. I don’t know if I’m any good at teaching people about chemistry, something that comes easily to me but not to most people. I never understood how teachers like Mr. Sellers spend their whole lives trying to explain it, over and over again, like a hamster on a wheel. But it’s too late to back out now.
    When I swing the front door open, I don’t expect to see Zach standing on the porch. I jump a foot in the air when I see his smiling face, holding two take-out cups of coffee, almost like he knew I was going to open the door at that exact moment.
    “Hello, Wednesday