Free Only Girls Allowed by Debra Moffitt

left the homepage up. A message apologized for the “temporary interruption.”
    â€œOh, I’ve seen this,” he said. “Taylor goes there all the time.”
    Great. He’s said eleven words to me and one of them was
Taylor.
    â€œWhat’s it all about?” he asked.
    You can imagine that my answer was a little awkward. I like Forrest
a lot
so I don’t exactly want to discuss PBBs with him. I mean, for me, he’s the second B, after all. What I did tell him was that girls need to know a lot of stuff as they get older, and the PLS helps them get answers to embarrassing questions.
    â€œLike about growing up, changes, and crushes and stuff,” I said.
    â€œOkay, so why did you bring
me
in here?” he asked.
    I knew the answer. In fact, I could have answered by describing all the layers of reasons I wanted Forrest to come to this place: to see something that mattered to me, something that made me special, and to see something that finally explained why I was climbing out of my locker in Taylor’s
Gotcha!
video. But I never got the chance to speak.
    Just then, we heard some noises from across the room.
Ka-chink
went a locker door, and then we saw a shaft of light. Before I could see who it was, Forrest was off down the stairs. I saw him head for my my pink locker door.I waited just a moment longer, long enough to see Bet land in the room.
    â€œOh, Jemma. It’s you. . . . ,” Bet said, looking up to the left and surprised to see me.
    Did she see the back of Forrest flying out of there?
    â€œUh, I have to go,” I said, bolting toward my locker door.
    I was momentarily crushed inside the locker with Forrest. He was jiggling the latch so frantically, I was worried about the noise coming through on the other side.
    â€œI’ll get it. I’ll get it,” I whispered.
    And then I paused just a few seconds before letting us out. I stopped to savor the smell of Forrest’s hooded sweatshirt. I inhaled slowly and deeply, and then Forrest said, “Open the door. I’m suffocating.” I let out my breath and let him go.
    My heart was pounding. After we stepped out of my locker, I wanted to explain that it was just Bet (though I could not explain
why
she was there). I wanted to finally give Forrest my layer cake of reasons why I wanted him to see the sacred offices of the Pink Locker Society. But Forrest quickly gathered his stuff from his own locker and, before I could utter a word, said he had to get going. I wanted a moment more to try to figure out if he was running off because he was worried about getting in trouble, or if he didn’t want anyone to see him alone with me. But he didn’t give me another moment. He turned, and I could only watch him hustle down the hall, cleats in hand, getting farther and farther away from me.

 

    One thing I didn’t think about was what I would do
after
Forrest and I had our pink locker moment. Fog, electricity, and love still filled my brain like a cloudy mess, but I started to feel more like myself. I wanted to tell Kate and Piper (especially Kate) what had happened. Had I made any progress with him? What did his actions mean, or how might we interpret them? But I had no one to overanalyze with.
    I couldn’t tell Kate or Piper anything without admitting that I lied. I took Forrest—a boy, no less—behind the pink locker door. I risked the future of the Pink Locker Society, all to make myself look good. It was like in a spy movie and I had become the weak link, blabbing about the secret stuff, endangering our mission. Before all this, Iwould have bet all the money I have (forty-seven dollars, some of it in quarters) on my belief that Forrest would tell no one. But after a week passed and Forrest had not uttered one word to me about the locker incident, I started to doubt him. Perhaps I had made a terrible mistake, and it would, sooner or later, catch up with me.
    It was nearly killing me