Free First Time for Everything by Andrea Speed Page A

unusually hot day in late April, and the entire student body has given up the fight with the school’s ridiculous inoperable windows and are letting our brains slowly melt. Of course, a subset of students has been working on this process all year already. Popular media tells me that this is the case at every high school in existence, and I am not one to argue.
    The heat seems to be getting to my teacher as well. He gazes dejectedly at our blank faces and wipes the sweat off his forehead with his right hand, outlining a wrinkle in chalk in the process.
    “Okay,” he sighs, “take five minutes to discuss what you just learned with your classmates.”
    We all proceed to do no such thing. While chatter at various degrees of enthusiasm (but none concerning Amazonian swamps) spreads throughout the room, I lay my head facedown on my desk, enjoying its cool surface for the brief moment it takes before it, too, is sticky and warm. I feel dizzy. I should have eaten today. Or at least have had a glass of water.
    “Heeeeeeeey, Michaaaaaaaaael.”
    Peter Bryce’s drawn-out voice is a squeaky fog horn that appears suddenly and loudly right beside my ear. I flinch, sit up straight, and avoid making eye contact as I reply.
    “Hey.”
    He leans toward me from his seat at the desk in front of mine, having turned around so that he is now sitting backward in his chair. Peter is big, far too big for a thirteen-year-old. His shoulders must be twice the size of mine. He has a wide, freckled face underneath his shaggy blond hair, and every time I see him, I think to myself that probably he didn’t even have to try to get his star spot on the football team. In ten years I expect to see him on every sports channel in existence, and I genuinely hope he will have a nicer voice by then. For the sake of his fans, if nothing else.
    He smiles at me and continues in a way that can be described as anything but sincere.
    “Sooooooo, are you going to the beach party this weekend, hm?”
    I look down at my hands on the table. They make an icky sound as I lift them and ball them into fists. The invitation that was passed around a week ago by the most beautiful girl in class is still lying at the bottom of my backpack, unopened. “I don’t think so,” I say.
    “Awww, whyyyyyy?” This long vowel shtick of his is nearing the ridiculous. I pause to think for a moment, and out of the dozen plausible excuses in my head, I go for the one that’s the most boring and the least likely to be believed.
    “I don’t have any swimwear.”
    Peter just laughs, not even bothering to dignify it with an answer. Whatever. I didn’t lie. I couldn’t have even if I wanted. For some reason I feel obligated to tell the truth whenever I speak, which is one of the reasons I don’t do it very often.
    The guy next to Peter, his conjoined-at-the-hip-best-friend Sebastian O’Daniels, looks at me with a wide grin, “You can just go skinny-dipping. I bet the girls would love that, Mikey.”
    I hate that I flush at the comment.
    Peter and Sebastian’s faces keep beaming like it’s a competition. In appearance they are vastly different, Sebastian being more chub than muscle, but they still look alike in some harmonious way. You don’t have to look twice to figure out they belong together. They’ve been like that since we started school. I can recall all three of us, eight years old, sitting on Sebastian’s mother’s velvet couch and playing video games together, but I don’t remember when that stopped. They always played as Mario and Luigi. Me: Yoshi.
    “Oh, leave him alone, Sebastian,” one of the girls from the table next to us interrupts. Marina Young scrunches up her face in mockery and continues. “We certainly would love it more than if it was you doing it. Please tell me you plan on keeping on your swim trunks, Seb—otherwise I’m worried I’ll have to skip the party.”
    The girl and the friend she’s sitting next to break into laughter; Sebastian