“Don’t touch that remote,” Bea says. I’ve just finished taking a shower at the dingy motel back in Alamo. “You don’t know what’s come across it. I watched this thing on Danger Land where they took swabs of hotel remotes, and you wouldn’t believe what they found. And I took the bedspreads off because they never wash them.”
“Duly noted,” I say, lying down. “Where’s Annabelle?” She hasn’t said a word to Bea since we’ve been back. I think she’s still mad at her for ditching us at the border. I hate being in the middle like this, but I’m not going to try to fix it, either; that’s up to Annabelle and Bea.
“Picking up dinner.”
The beds are hard and the pillows flat. I stack two under my head and take out my phone. I need to text my mom, but I don’t know what to tell her. I put it down, and then I pick it up again.
Hey, just checking in, I type. Having fun, learning lots. Willow is amazing.
Mom immediately responds. Great. You have a good time. Daddy and I miss you. I don’t know about Chris, though! I think he’s already hoping to have your room for some sort of virtual reality video thing when you go off to college.
Annabelle comes in holding a pizza box in one hand and a bag with salads in it in the other.
That’s a big surprise. Gotta go! Dinner’s here.
Enjoy. Love you, honey.
We sit around the little table and pass around the salad. “It sucks that I can’t tell my mom,” I say.
“It’s hard to talk to parents about stuff like this,” Annabelle says.
“I tell my mom everything,” Bea says.
“Yeah, well, that’s because you’ve never done anything like this,” I point out. “I mean, what have you ever done to make your parents mad? I can’t think of anything.”
Bea takes a bite of her pizza and chews. “How about that time I signed up for twenty angels off the church Christmas tree? I didn’t think it would be that expensive to buy toys for twenty kids, but it was. My mom had to pay for them.”
Annabelle stares at Bea, her slice of pizza halfway to her mouth. “Seriously? That’s the worst thing you’ve done? You volunteered to buy too many Christmas presents for children in need?”
“Yeah,” Bea says, raising her eyebrows. “It was bad. My mom was really mad about it.”
Annabelle puts her pizza down and wipes the grease off her fingers. “Wow,” she says. “Just … wow.”
Bea shrugs. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d been there.”
“What about you, Annabelle?” I ask.
She leans her elbow on the table and cups her chin in her hand. “Well, let’s see. My parents weren’t too happy with me being a Planned Parenthood clinic volunteer. My dad wouldn’t talk to me for days after I told him. He’s a huge Republican, just loves, loves Rick Perry. Isn’t all that fond of President Obama, that’s for sure. Plus he hates how open people are about sex now. He says Planned Parenthood encourages people to have sex. Or relations, as he calls it.”
“My parents would kill me if I even thought about having relations,” Bea says. “We don’t talk about that kind of stuff at my house. I don’t think I’ve ever even said the V-word at home.”
“The V-word?” Annabelle directs a long look at Bea.
“You know.”
“Do you mean vagina?”
“Yeah, that.”
I press my mouth shut hard so I don’t burst out laughing.
“You can’t say it, can you?” Annabelle continues.
“Yes, I can!” Bea says. She picks up another slice of pizza and crams it in her mouth.
“So, say it.”
Bea takes forever to chew and swallow. “Um … vagina,” she whispers.
Annabelle puts her hand behind her ear. “What?”
“Vagina!” Bea raises her voice. “There, I said it. I told you I could.”
Annabelle picks up her slice again. “In England they made us yell all sorts of swear words onstage, one by one. It’s supposed to break through our inhibitions, they told us. We had to read them off a list. Really filthy words, too. Did you know fanny means vagina in England?”
“I’m not sure I could say vagina onstage. Definitely not the C-word,” I say. “It seems too, I don’t know … embarrassing.”
“That’s the point,” Annabelle says. “To break through all of that. Besides, people should be able to call a vagina a vagina, for fuck’s sake. Why be embarrassed about it? I mean, did you get pregnant through an immaculate conception?” she asks, teasing.
“No.”
“You can have sex with boys, so you should be able to talk about your vagina.”
“Well, then, that lets me off the hook because I won’t have sex until I get married,” Bea says.
“She made a vow of purity in her church,” I say.
“Really?” Annabelle asks.
“Show her your ring, Bea.”
Bea wiggles her ring off her finger and hands it to Annabelle.
Annabelle holds the ring between her thumb and forefinger. “I will wait for my beloved,” she says, reading the inscription on the front of the ring. “Did your parents make you do this or did the church?”
“No one made me. The church won’t let us take the vow if it isn’t our choice. We have to come to the idea on our own, but our parents present the rings.”
“Her church had a father-daughter purity ball,” I say. “Bea wore this beautiful white ball gown, and her dad wore a tuxedo.”
“Our dads were our dates,” Bea says. “There was a big cake and everything.”
“Gotta love cake.” Annabelle hands her the ring back. “Is your boyfriend religious, too?”
“Mateo? No. His parents are Catholic, but he’s not interested, so they don’t force him to go or anything. I think he goes to Mass on Christmas, but that’s about it.” She holds her hand up, studying the ring like she’s seeing it for the first time. “Sometimes I worry he’ll get tired of waiting and go off with someone else. Sometimes I think he’s frustrated, like I’m letting him down if I don’t do it.”
“If he pressures you into sex, he’s not worth having,” Annabelle says.
“I suppose you’re right,” Bea says. “But still. Did you feel pressured, Annabelle?”
“No,” she says. “Not at all.”
“Didn’t you go out with Kai Nguyen?” I ask. “He was Romeo and you were Juliet, right?” No one could forget those two. They smoldered on the stage so hard, and they were always getting caught making out in the wings before they went on. Mr. Knight had to tell them to knock it off.
“Yep. We lost our virginity on Juliet’s balcony.” She waits for our reaction, a huge grin on her face.
“Juliet’s balcony?” I laugh. “How? It was barely big enough for you, much less two of you!”
“We did it standing up, but it wasn’t easy. And in the middle of it, part of the scenery came off and we almost fell.”
“Oh! I remember that!” Bea says. “Everyone blamed the theater ghost, but it was you?”
“Yep, me and Kai, doing it on the balcony. Losing our virginity.” She reaches for another slice. “Man…,” she says between bites. “I haven’t thought about that guy in a long time. He was really nice.”
We sit there quietly, each of us maybe thinking about nice boys and carefree hookups.