Men Are Like Cars

  Chapter 1

  June 27 and before

  I couldn’t be sure if I was a teenage lesbo. Yes. I was a girl who dreamed of other girls—or at least of one in particular. Images of her soft lips and skin combining with my own assaulted me in bare daylight. Prob was I dreamed of guys too—like Andrew, the hot school’s quarter back—so you might call me freak like almost everybody at school did. I preferred to be called Alex, like my BFF Jennifer started calling me. Not at first, though. Mom and I moved in Somerset in March. Back then, Jenny barely noticed me at school, or so I believed. I had no friends. When I walked down the school halls, people striped me naked with their fixed gazes, and I could hear them calling me ‘lesbo’ and ‘freak’ behind my back.

  One day in early April I was sitting on a bench in the school yard having lunch and minding my own business when Jennifer approached me. I already knew her because we shared a coupla classes, but we’d never talked before.

  “Hi,” she said. “It’s Alexandra, right?”

  I raised my head and squinted. The sun stood behind her and I couldn’t make out her features. She was only a tall silhouette surrounded by an aura of flaring, golden hair. Like an angel. I cleared my throat. “Y… yes.”

  “My name’s Jennifer, but call me Jenny, okay? I wanna be your friend.” Matter-of-fact tone. No room for bullshit. She sat beside me, which was unbelievable.

  My sandwich stood in midair, right in front of my open mouth. I put it down before she would grab it, throw it away, and laughed at me. She didn’t. I waited, not sure whether I should leave or stand her bullying. I waited longer. After ages, I cocked my head and raised my eyebrows. “You... what?”

  “I wanna be friends with you, Alex.” That’s when she first called me Alex. It felt cool.

  I pulled my dark sunglasses down and looked over the rims.

  “Why… why would you?” My stomach had just hardened. Jenny was the hottest girl I’ve ever seen, and she smelled like flowers. “Nobody wants to be my friend.”

  “Exactly because of that. You need a friend badly.” Her hands reached for my sunglasses and pulled them off. “And because you’ve got the hottest eyes in the whole damned world. Why do you always wear dark glasses?”

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