Virgin Territory by James Lecesne Page A

asks me.
    “Uh? Think?” I mutter, trying to look as though I’ve been paying attention, but no one is fooled. “About what?”
    “Don’t drag him into it,” says Crispy. “Just admit you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re repeating stuff you’ve heard in church.”
    “I do too know what I’m talking about,” she says, practicallyspitting the words at him. “It means just what it says. It means to turn the other cheek.”
    “Wrong,” Crispy says in a singsong voice.
    “Then what?” she wants to know.
    “During the time of Jesus, Jews were second-class citizens—slaves, really. And there was a law on the books that allowed Roman soldiers to slap a Jewish person, but only with the back of his hand.”
    “This was an actual law?” Des asks.
    And here he demonstrates. He’s the Roman, and I’m the Jew. He raises his right hand and slowly, very slowly, with his knuckles facing away from him, traces a path from his left shoulder to my right cheek. He’s totally showing off, but no one calls him on it.
    “Boom. What Jesus was
actually
saying? If a Roman slaps you, you should offer him your
other
cheek, your
left
cheek. That way the Roman guy is forced to deal with you like an equal, with a closed fist. He actually has to punch you man to man.”
    Crispy demonstrates again, but this time his right hand is bunched into a hard ball of bone and headed slo-mo for the left side of my jaw.
    “Boom. It was a brilliant strategy. This is civil disobedience, people. Not some namby-pamby, hit-me-one-more-time crap.”
    “Where’d you learn all that?” I ask him.
    Angela sidles into the booth beside me, and once she’s settled I can feel her hip bone pressing against mine. I’m having trouble breathing.
    “Just something I picked up,” Crispy replies, and then he disappears behind the cover of his sunglasses, where no one can read his expression. Even though we can’t prove what he says, it sounds credible enough.
    Desirée’s phone blings a text message, and she says, “I gotta meet my mom at the golf course after lunch, so we ought to get going if we’re going.”
    “Where we going?” I ask.
    They all exchange a conspiratorial look.
    “Well, we had this idea,” Angela begins. “Y’see, we don’t get to hang out at home so much these days.”
    “In fact, not at all,” Crispy interjects.
    “Laundromats, diners, motels, Internet cafés—but never home,” Angela continues. “And right about now I’d give my whole allowance if I could just take a bath in an actual tub with real bubbles.”
    “We’re not going to steal anything,” Desirée insists. “Nothing like that. We just want to hang out in someone’s house, watch some high-def TV, maybe eat a sandwich. No one will even know we were there.”
    “You mean break into someone’s house?” I ask, trying to keep my eyes from bugging out of my skull and my voice down to a whisper. “Here? In Jupiter? Are you nuts?”
    “Well,” Crispy announces, “there’s always
your
house.”
    “No,” I say. “That’s not going to happen. My dad doesn’t let me have people in when he’s not there.” And that’s the truth.He’s always reminding me that it’s Marie’s house and we have to respect her rights even though she doesn’t live there anymore and wouldn’t know the difference.
    Angela leans in so close to me I can smell the sweetness of her lip gloss and feel her warm breath on my cheek. I watch her mouth move as she says, “(a) Want something” and “(b) Take a risk.” I imagine the two of us lying in a great big California king bed, making out, and maybe going all the way.
    Then she turns to Des and Crispy and says, “What do you guys think? I mean, about Alex. You think he’s up for his first Virgin Club challenge? Breaking and entering.”
    The girls hustle themselves into the ladies’ room, leaving Crispy and me alone. There’s definitely excitement in the air, but it also feels a lot like fear. We could