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and I just said no, although I thought it would be kind offunny if Mom had to sign a slip giving me permission to sleep over at DJ's.
    To whom it may concern:
I, Shannon Hofstra Dalrymple, grant permission for my daughter, Mariah Hofstra, to spend the night at the home of her boyfriend, who is seventeen years old, turning eighteen in the sum-mer. There will be no adults present to provide supervision, giving them the opportunity to spend the entire night together and wake up in the morning in the same bed.
    I'd been waiting for a night like this. The first few times we were together we did it in his bedroom but it was always rushed and he always had to hurry me out before his mom got home. Since then it had mostly been in the backseat of his car. It's not all that comfortable or nice and it's not the kind of place where you want to spend much time after it's over holding each other. You pretty much just want to sit up and stretch your legs out and get your clothes back on.
    But tonight was going to be different. I could lie in his arms all night long.
    DJ was my first but he doesn't even know it. I managed to grind my teeth through what was a pretty unpleasant experience without shedding a tear or letting out any cries of pain. There wasn't all that much blood afterwards, but what there was he noticed, and I had to tell him I was just getting over myperiod, which somehow seemed less embarrassing than admitting it was my first time having sex.
    I know that people at school assume I've had sex even though I've never bragged about it. I think you can tell with people. Like even though I've never asked her, obviously Anna hasn't had sex. Probably not Emma either.
    I told Mom I'd be back by midday on Saturday. She slipped me a twenty and told me to bring Jessica a souvenir. I figured I had a day and a half to come up with a good excuse for why I forgot to bring her back anything and what hap-pened to the twenty.
    Carl wasn't a problem because Carl doesn't get involved in where I am or what I'm doing, unless it's to criticize me in some way, like about my room or what I wear or why my grades aren't good enough. He was gone early Friday morning like he is every day of the week. Off to his boring job running some big boring department at boring CompuCorp, where they pay him enough money to have a pool in his backyard.
    I met Emma and Anna after school in the library like I always did and we had some time to kill, so we walked into town and I got a cup of coffee and Emma got a tea and Anna got a hot chocolate at the Big Cup, which is our lame town's version of a hip café, and we ran into Silas and Bronwyn. Emma went white as a ghost and that's saying a lot because the girl is seriously fair-skinned. I didn't have time to give Emma a lecture about playing it cool, so I just walked us all over to Silas's table and said hi to them, and Bronwyn gave Emma a big hug. We sat down for a few minutes and then they got up to leave and Silas messed up Emma's hair and said, “Don't get too wildtonight.” And he did the same to Anna's hair and then gave my shoulder a squeeze and it was clear that he wasn't suspicious at all.
    DJ was half an hour late picking us up but that was okay because it was kind of nice sitting down by the river. It was gray and cool. A big barge worked its way slowly upstream against the current. Nobody else was around, although we did see that homeless guy who hangs out by the river sometimes. He didn't come anywhere near us. Once when I was down there with DJ, the guy looked like he was going to come up to us and maybe ask for money or something and DJ's friend Brian threw a rock at him and now I guess he knows that it's best if he keeps his distance.
    We heard a car horn.
    “Hello, ladies.” DJ rolled down his window. “Hop on in.”
    We threw our bags in the back and I gave him a long kiss and introduced him to Anna and Emma.
    “It's a pleasure,” he said, and he smiled one of those smiles that showed off his