Free Very LeFreak by Rachel Cohn Page B

briefest moment. Then it just feels sort of sad and lonely .
    Very didn’t know this piece of useful health information from her own experience. But she had read enough customers’ reviews of vibrator products on drugstore.com (as instructed by the Go Ask Alice! health people online) to feel educated on the topic.
    “Very? Seriously? I don’t know anyone who knows so much about this stuff by your age. You just turned nineteen , for goodness’ sake. How old were you when you first had sex, anyway?”
    Just in case Aunt Esther was a teensy bit awake, Very whispered: “Thirteen.” The answer was a lie. Very had been a month shy of her thirteenth birthday.
    “That’s terrible,” Lavinia said, looking at Very pityingly. Lavinia placed her knitting on the floor and stood up. “I need to go to sleep. I suggest you do the same before you stir up more trouble.” She wagged her finger at Very, teasing. “No orgies out there tonight, okay, young lady?”
    “All right,” Very groaned.
    Lavinia stepped over to Aunt Esther to lay her down properly from her hunched position. Aunt Esther barely stirred as Lavinia guided her legs onto the sofa and moved her head onto a pillow, then took the afghan hanging on the back of the sofa and placed it over her.
    Lavinia placed a kiss on top of Very’s head. “Good night,” she said, then headed upstairs to bed.
    Very was not tired. The night was still so young.
    How could she pass this time trapped in New Haven without imploding? She was too buzzed from the meal and the weed to study. She could go onto The Grid and see what everyone back at school was up to. But no, she wasn’t finished with the Grid people here in New Haven yet. She should return outside, where she and Bryan had unfinished business that Very knew exactly how to handle.
    Very walked into the kitchen en route to doing exactly that, but the dishwasher seemed to call to her: Unload me, Very! You know that would be the smarter option . Wow, now even the dishwasher was talking to her. She’d thought her psychic intuition with appliances only happened with machines that could go online.
    But if she unloaded the dishwasher, Aunt Esther would only complain in the morning that she’d put everything back in the wrong place. She thought to alphabetize Aunt Esther’s cookbooks instead, but that would only fill Very with disdain for that old-fashioned way of cooking, when there were perfectly fine recipes to Google and cooking demonstrations to YouTube.
    Very returned to the TV room and plopped herself onto the armchair. She could watch TV. Yes, that was the safest option. But before Very could tap into the remote, her iPhone vibrated. Please , Very willed the phone, let it be El Virus, at last!
    But no … it was Amanda Yamaguchi, who wanted to know if there was going to be another party this weekend.
    Party on her iPhone, of course. That’s how Very could pass the time tonight.
    Very played with the vibrate feature, setting it on and off to make it buzz on her hand, on her stomach, on her thigh, and, oh my, she was turned on for real now. If she’d developed that Pandora’s-box app for her iPhone by now, for sure the demons in it would be telling her, Very, Very, don’t be contrary. Close the box on Bryan already. We know you know how. Go on out there, girl .
    They were tricky, those demons. Could they be trusted?
    Of course they could be trusted. She’d created them. She owned them. They wouldn’t lead her astray.
    Very still had to give Bryan his consolation prize. Because wasn’t the flu staved off by a vaccine of … more flu? That’s what Very had to do. Inoculate Bryan against Very by giving him a last dose of Very. That’s what the demons in the box meant she should do. That’s how she could shut the box finally.
    Very returned to the backyard, where Bryan sat alone, finishing off their joint from earlier.
    “Where’s Jean-Wayne?” Very asked Bryan. The hardest part about dealing with Bryan since the