Free Amelia O’Donohue Is So Not a Virgin by Helen Fitzgerald Page B

then lay in my bed and thought about the kiss. The warm, perfect kiss.
    Oh dear, this wasn’t supposed to happen. This thing with Sammy had gone too far. This would unravel me, unravel everything.
    I wouldn’t let it. I would put Sammy away somewhere safe and un-gettable.
    So I didn’t meet Sammy the following afternoon. I avoided the curry shop from then on.

CHAPTER
EIGHT
    I can’t remember exactly when the girls got fed up with tormenting me. Not long after christmas, I think, they began to realize that my lack of response gave them no pleasure. Also, Louisa started to realize that I was the only person she could be outwardly clever with. She came to my room a few times on the sly to talk over math problems. To add to that, Mandy and Taahnya et al., had discovered that Jan, the International girl, cried when they called her a chinky. Before long, she was the one whose bed was filled with Coco Pops. Poor Jan.
    Something had changed in me around christmas time, anyway. I felt energetic, invigorated, and focused. I no longer cared about whether Mandy and Louisa liked me. I’d stopped taking the buses into town on Fridays. Girls giggling with stupid boys. Girls buying makeup and tops. Girls shoplifting and telling everyone. Fridays in town were not for me. It did my nut in. I had no interest in anything but work. And work I did. I read all the books on the English reading list three times,then found all the literary criticism I could in the library, then wrote two practice essays for each. I liked my one on T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” the best. But my take on John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany was pretty original, if I do say so myself. I managed to get all the exam papers for the past three years in biology, math, physics, and chemistry, and had them down pat after four or five attempts. In between, I handed in all my assignments and essays with pride and confidence. I was pretty good at this academic malarkey.
    I don’t know how Louisa managed to stay in with the Populars and work so hard, but she did. Maybe it was just the smoking. An inordinate amount of cool bonding seemed to take place on the fire escapes. Louisa studied almost as much as I did, and always got As. She and I were constantly looking at each other as papers were handed back, wondering who’d done better. It was always very close.
    • • •
    Through January, February, and March, the only incident that varied my study routine happened on the night of the second school dance. I stayed behind this time, with girls who felt too ugly or too hip or too devoted to boyfriends from elsewhere to go. Surprisingly, Amelia O’Donohue was one of them. “The boys are idiots and the girls are worse,” I overheard her sayingto Taahnya. “I’d rather watch the telly.” Which is what she did. Nonstop.
    I was writing an English essay at my desk when my door opened and closed and Sammy stood before me, just like that.
    “How did you get in here?”
    “Just walked in the front entrance. What’s wrong with you?”
    “Nothing.”
    “We have the most perfect moment then you disappear for months.”
    “I’m sorry, but I’m not interested in getting involved.”
    “I’ve never met anyone like you, Rachel Ross. You’re infuriating. You’re the cleverest person I’ve ever met and you’re funny and incredibly easy to be around, but it’s like you’ve tuned everything out. How can you do that?”
    “I’m just motivated.”
    “No. I don’t think it’s that. You’re scared.”
    “I am not.”
    “Then kiss me. And I don’t mean let me kiss you. I mean kiss me .”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “You may not understand this, but I have one goal. I don’t want anything to screw it up.”
    Before I had time to stop him, Sammy grabbed me old-movie style and kissed me violently. I didn’t succumb or soften, I pushed him away and yelled, “Get out of here! How dare you? I never want to see you again for as long as I