Firsts Read Online Free PDF

sounds impatiently outside—apparently her date is too afraid to come to the door—she’s gone, in a flurry of cloying perfume and hair spray.
    I walk upstairs to my room slowly, my eyes pricking with tears. I hate how I even still care, how even my shock tactics are completely lost on Kim. I could probably tell her exactly what Zach and I did on her countertop and she would give me a high five.
    I should be working on homework, writing the essay on moral ambiguity in Hamlet that’s due next week or typing up this week’s chemistry assignment, which I’ll finish by myself and slap Zach’s name on. But instead, I pull the white book out of my nightstand and flip absentmindedly through the pages. I read it backwards, starting with Evan Brown—who I decided to call the Gamer—and end on page one. The only one without a nickname.
    His name is Tommy Hudson. He didn’t come to me—I found him. It was only a few months ago, though it feels so much longer. I have passed him in the hall almost every day since, but he never makes eye contact. Probably because he’s always holding her hand. Jillian Landry, willowy, long-limbed Jillian, who most likely doesn’t even know my name. But I know her.
    Jillian will never know this, but she is the reason I started doing what I do. Or did. After Trevor it will be did . Honest. Jillian planted the seed on the very first day of senior year, when she burst into the girls’ bathroom with her sobbing friend in tow. Annalise was Jillian’s sidekick, the chubby best friend who never got out of Jillian’s shadow until she made one huge mistake.
    “I’m so screwed,” Annalise had whined. I could see her thick ankles from my vantage point on the toilet, clad in those stupid juvenile jelly sandals she always insisted on wearing. At that point, I still only knew her as Jillian’s friend. I lifted my Converse-clad feet soundlessly off the ground and tucked them onto the toilet seat.
    “Seriously, Annie, it’s going to be okay. I’m sure it’s a false alarm. Everything’s going to be okay.” She hesitated a moment. “Are you sure you want to do this here?”
    “It’s not like I can do it at home. My mom’s always watching.”
    They didn’t even check to see if anyone else was in the bathroom, or maybe they didn’t care. I knew exactly what they were doing. If the rustling of the paper bag or the sound of pee coming in awkward spurts didn’t give them away, Annalise’s terrified little whimpers would have. I should have gotten up, flushed, and left, but by that point I didn’t want to give away that I was there, and I was way too intrigued to go.
    “You look,” Annalise had said to Jillian when they exited the stall. “I can’t.”
    A long silence. I think I even held my breath.
    Jillian didn’t say anything. Through the crack in the stall door, I could see her shake her head in the mirror. Annalise burst into tears, giant sobs that wracked the whole bathroom.
    “Now what?” she said. “My mom won’t let me finish high school here. She’ll make me go to some special school for pregnant fuckups. She’s going to kill me!”
    “Can’t you get an abortion?” Jillian had said quietly.
    “No way.” Annalise’s red face was quivering, but she shook her head defiantly. “I might be a fuckup, but I’d never do that.”
    In the stall, I started to feel heat creeping up my neck. I put a hand on the toilet paper dispenser to steady myself and remind myself to breathe.
    “I can’t believe it,” Annalise said, blowing her nose into a giant wad of paper towels. “Matt never wanted to wear a condom, but he said it would be okay. And it’s not!”
    “You didn’t make him wear a condom?” Jillian said, her voice raised at the end. I had a pretty good idea then, not from the question itself but the question in her voice, that Jillian and Tommy hadn’t ever done the deed.
    “He said it desensitized his cock. God, I’m such an idiot!”
    Jillian rubbed her friend’s