V is for Virgin

  “I’M GOING TO KILL HIM!” I screeched again.

  I’d startled both Robin and Margret with that second outburst, but I just couldn’t help it. I’d never been so angry in all my life. I must have looked as close to going off the deep end as I felt too, because Margret patted my shoulder and said, “Valerie, dear, why don’t you take a break for fifteen minutes or so. You need to get some air.”

  “I’m sorry, Margret.” I sighed, trying to rein in my temper. I shouldn’t worry her so much—she’s liable to have a heart attack. “I’m okay.”

  “Nonsense dear. You go with your friend and relax for a bit.” She glanced around at the empty story and smiled. “I’m pretty sure I can manage on my own until you get back.”

  “Thanks, Margret.”

  I dragged Robin over to the food court, and she continued to fill me in on everything while I got my usual orange smoothie and then went over to the frozen yogurt stand. I was in luck, because this guy Reggie was working, and he has this big nerdy crush on me so he always puts a shot of chocolate frozen yogurt in my smoothie when his boss isn’t looking.

  “Hey, Valerie!” he chirped as I handed him my cup.

  Robin wrinkled up her nose as she realized what he was doing. “That’s disgusting.”

  “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” I told her. “If it wasn’t good they wouldn’t make those chocolate oranges at Christmas.”

  Robin continued to frown as Reggie handed me back my cup. Then he pointed to the string on his apron rather proudly. “See?” he asked me. “This is why I needed a bracelet.”

  Yesterday, Reggie had come by my booth at the festival and bought a white bracelet. I’d questioned him on his choice of jewelry and he told me to come see him at work. He had that bracelet tied around the strap of his apron. The white beads contrasted perfectly against the black material. Everyone in the food court could see that Reggie was still a virgin—not that they were at all surprised about that.

  “I’ve been explaining it to everyone all day!”

  “That’s great, Reggie.”

  I started to walk away—getting a free shot of chocolate for my smoothies is one thing, but I don’t need him thinking he’s taking me to prom—but he called me back. “Hey, Valerie, if you’ve got any more copies of the fliers from yesterday for your website, you could leave them on the counter here. I’d be happy to hand them out to people.”

  “That’s really sweet, Reggie, thanks, but I ran out. I’ve got to get back to work now. I’ll see you next time.”

  “Looks like someone has a fan club,” Robin said as we got back to the store.

  “Yeah, that’s Reggie. I kind of feel bad about using the poor guy for free yogurt, but it’s not like I’m extra friendly or anything. He just offers.”

  “I’m not talking about the yogurt guy,” Robin said. She was pointing inside the jewelry store.

  At first all I saw was the group of people, and I felt bad for leaving Margret alone. It’s not that she doesn’t know how to do her job, but she does pay me even though she doesn’t need the help. I should at least do the work. When there ever is any.

  But the people in the store weren’t there to buy any gold. When I got closer, I could see all the camera equipment gathered around their feet. There were also big lights being set up and one of those long microphone things that they hold over your head. All of them said KTLA Eyewitness news.

  “I wonder why they’re back,” Robin whispered under her breath as we walked in. I didn’t get the chance to mimic her question.

  “Oh! Here she is!” Margret cheered. She smiled as proud as if I were her own granddaughter. “Valerie! These nice folks want to do a story on you.”

  “Hello, Valerie!”

  “Um, hi?”

  “You’re going to have to speak up when the camera’s rolling, hon—with confidence, and stand up straight. The outfit’s nice, but we have got to do something about that hair.”

  “What about my hair?” I wasn’t appreciating this woman’s in-your-face attitude.

  “It’s nice,” the reporter assured me. “But the camera will not be kind to your face if you keep your hair framing it that way, trust me. You’ll look as round as a button. Have you got a clip? We need to see cheekbones.”

  Margret was reaching for a jewel-studded hair clip before I even had any time to respond.

  “Have you got any make-up in your purse? You could use a touch-up,” the reported continued on.

  “Uh… maybe?”

  “Try not to use the words ‘uh’ and ‘um’ when we’re rolling.”

  The woman reached out to straighten the collar on my shirt, and I finally snapped. “Why don’t you back up out of my personal space, and take a breather for five minutes?” I snapped.

  The woman looked totally abashed. Journalists. If Eric were here he’d be rolling his eyes with me. Robin, however, was excited by it all.

  “Now, let’s try this again,” I said once I had the lady’s attention. “You want to interview me?”

  The woman nodded. She was still a little dumbfounded at the way I was running the conversation.

  “All right. Then why don’t you try asking me if you can? Make sure you say please. Then, maybe we’ll talk.”

  The women looked even more surprised still, but her frown turned into an appraising smile. “I like your style,” she said, and then stuck her hand out to me. “Destiny Williams. KTLA Eyewitness news. I would very much like to do an interview with you, Valerie.”

  I raised my eyebrow at her.

  “Please?” she asked with a laugh.

  “And what would be the subject of this interview?”

  My question confused her. “You, of course.”

  “You mean my V is for Virgin campaign?”

  “Yes, and the jewelry, and the website…”

  The way her voice trailed off made me suspicious. “And Kyle Hamilton and his new song about me?”

  Destiny blushed. She was so busted.

  “I have no comment,” I said and walked back behind the counter.

  “Okay, fine, no Kyle Hamilton.”

  I glared at her. “Or anything to do with Tralse.”

  “Or anything to do with Tralse,” she echoed, though clearly not happy about it. “I promise.”

  I glanced over at Robin, and she nodded her head enthusiastically.

  Fifteen minutes later Destiny-with-KTLA-Eyewitness-News had kept her word and not mentioned a word about Tralse, or their stupid new song, or Kyle and his awesome blog—which I’m betting she didn’t know about or she wouldn’t have promised.

  Ugh, I so wanted to murder him for that.

  I wouldn’t talk about Kyle, but I did tell her about Zach when she asked. “It wasn’t entirely his fault,” I explained. I surprised myself when I defended him. “I never lied to him, but I wasn’t straightforward either. I caught him off guard, and I think I really hurt his feelings. It’s just that I was always too scared to tell him the truth. If he knew from the beginning that I wasn’t going to have sex, maybe things would have been different.”

  I sounded optimistic, but since Zach hooked up with Olivia Lewis like five seconds after dumping me, I had my doubts. “But that’s my whole point,” I said. “If I hadn’t been so sure of my decision for so long, I might have given him what he wanted just because I was too scared to tell him the truth. It happens to people all the time.”

  That’s when I told her about the YouTube video and all the comments. It was the comments that had inspired me anyway, not Zach. Then I explained my booth at the festival and how people really seemed to respond. I even told her about Reggie over at the yogurt stand wearing his virgin bracelet, and told her she should interview him since he seemed so excited to shout it from the rooftops.

  The interview went pretty much the way the one at the festival had, except that it was more in depth. Then, at the end she asked me how I felt about the money I’d raised, and all the media attention I was receiving.


  “I’m shocked,” I said. “It’s all very overwhelming. I just wanted to prove a point to the kids at school who’d been laughing at me. I hoped I might make it easier for anyone else who might be in my position. I never dreamed it would go past the walls of Huntington High. I could do without the TV interviews, but I do think it’s important, and I’m glad that so many people have taken an interest in it.”

  As Destiny wrapped up her interview she asked me one last question. One I most definitely hadn’t been expecting. “So where can people get more of your V is for Virgin jewelry?” she asked, pointing to the necklace I was wearing.

  “What do you mean?”

  “After our broadcast last night our station was swarmed with phone calls and e-mails from viewers wanting to know where they can get their own V is for Virgin necklaces.”

  “Really?”

  I’d become the stammering idiot again because I just couldn’t believe it. People who didn’t even know me—who didn’t know what happened, and had no idea how cool Isaac Warren was, or that Devon and Lacy were trying the abstinence challenge—still wanted to wear the jewelry?

  “Face it Virgin Val, you’re a smash hit!”

  That comment was coming dangerously close to the Kyle subject. Destiny understood the icy glare I gave her. She sighed and kept to a safe topic. “So how about it? Where can people get their hands on a V is for Virgin bracelet?”

  I shook my head, about to tell her I didn’t have any more, that I’d sold out at the festival, but Margret stepped in and put her arm around me. “We’re working on it,” she told the reporter. I looked at her and she winked quickly. “Valerie’s always wanted to start her own line of jewelry. She’s got a bunch of sketches already made up. As soon as the jewelry is ready it’ll be for sale here at the store.”

  “And through the website!” Robin piped up. “We’re currently redesigning the site to handle the unexpected amount of traffic we’ve received. The new site will be up in a few days, and will have more info about the up and coming V is for Virgin Jewelry Line.”

  I glanced back and forth between Margret and Robin and then back at Destiny, who seemed to be waiting for me to say something. I shrugged helplessly. “What they said.”

  “Great!”

  As soon as the KTLA news team packed up and left I turned to Margret. “What are you talking about? We aren’t starting a line of jewelry.”

  “Well why on earth not honey? It seems you’ve already got a market ready and waiting to buy. I’ll make a call to some of my suppliers in the jewelry district downtown. I’m sure someone will be willing to make at least a sample batch.”

  “This is so exciting!” Robin squealed. “Val, we have so much to do!”

  “But you guys, we can’t do this. Not for real. I mean you can’t just start selling stuff online. There are laws. You have to start your own business and stuff.”

  “We can work it all out dear,” Margret insisted. “I already own a business. It can’t be that hard to set it up so that I can sell things online.”

  “But—”

  “Val,” Robin said again. “With all this free publicity? You can’t pass up an opportunity like this. You could be a real jewelry designer. You said you wanted to make a change. Think of how much good it could do. Kids all over the country would be wearing the jewelry. You could even still donate a big percentage of the profits to the Not Everybody’s Doing It Foundation.”

  Both Robin and Margret were staring at me with such pleading looks. How was I supposed to refuse? It’s not like I didn’t want to do it, it sounded very exciting, it was just all happening so fast.

  I felt like my head was swimming. I knew that if I did this, somehow my life would change, but then, hadn’t it already done that? TV news interviews…rock stars writing songs about me…Isaac Warren offering to buy me milkshakes! Whether I did V is for Virgin for real or not, things were going to be different for me. I may as well get my own jewelry line out of it.

  “Do you really think we can get someone to make my designs?” I asked Margret.

  “They’d better,” she said, glancing around her empty store. “Otherwise how are we going to put Tiffany’s out of business?”

  “All right,” I relented. “Let’s give it a shot.”

  We got to work straight away. Margret let Robin have her chair behind the counter, and went into the back office to start making phone calls to all of her jewelry connections. I sat down with Robin going over the specifics of our website, occasionally getting up to help any birthday and anniversary present shoppers who came in to the store.

  Robin had warned me about all the comments from the jealous Tralse fans, so those were no surprise, but she hadn’t told me about the rest of it. “What is this?” I asked for the umpteenth time that afternoon.

  “Remember how we put that ‘contact us’ button at the bottom of page?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well these are all the people who felt the need to contact us.”

  “But this inbox is full.”

  “I know! I tried to skim a little of it earlier, but I didn’t get very far. It looks like mostly emails of people wanting to buy jewelry, mixed in with rabid fans wanting to be your new best friend. There was even one guy wanting to send us his demo CD to give to Kyle.”

  “I’m going to kill him,” I grumbled to myself.

  “Hey,” Robin argued, “you kind of owe him. If he hadn’t written that song, you wouldn’t have made the eleven o’clock news last night, and Devon and Lacy would still be the only people signed up for the abstinence challenge.”

  I shrugged. Grudgingly. “I guess I’ll have to thank him, and then kill him.” Something dawned on me then. “Did you say someone else beside Devon and Lacy signed up for the abstinence challenge?”

  Robin smiled at me, and then clicked on the challenge page. “Thirteen less people are having sex in the world today. Four of whom claim to be male.”

  “Oscar-The-Abstinent-Grouch?” I laughed as I read the list of screen names.

  “I read his first entry.” Robin giggled. “He’s not too happy, but his girlfriend signed up, so he said since he’s not getting any anyway, he may as well sign up so he can complain to an audience.”

  “At least he didn’t dump her.” Score one point for him.

  I skimmed through a lot more of the comments, and Robin was right. Ninety percent of them were comments about how I don’t deserve someone like Kyle Hamilton. Apparently, I’d broken his heart, and that makes me the biggest...well, I’m sure you can imagine. Which, of course, is just ridiculous because Kyle Hamilton doesn’t seem to have a heart. Just hormones.

  “Oh, hey,” I said noticing one comment in particular. “It’s Lacrosse4life.”

  Lacrosse4life: This is cool of you Val. I wish I had your kind of guts. Hopefully someday I’ll be able to come out of the closet about my virginity.

  A closet virgin. Nice. The poor guy. He’s right, us girls may have it rough, but he had to have it a thousand times worse. “We should have a special section of the forum just for guys,” I said. “It sounds like they need a support group.”

  “That’s a good idea, but that poor guy will probably still be an army of one.”

  “Yeah.” I sighed. “Sad.”

  “Speaking of adding things to the site, what if we do a ‘how it all got started’ section? I’d like link the YouTube video to our page.”

  “You want to put that monstrosity on the website?”

  “Hey,” Robin said, holding back laughter, “it was a very stunning performance, Val.” Then more seriously she said, “That video is what sparks all the best conversation. People love to see you literally standing up for yourself. Getting up on the table like that…. You’re like the Joan of Arc of virgins. Plus, I like the idea of thousands of people seeing Olivia Lewis get humiliated publically.”

  She was right. That right there was worth it.

  Robin and I laughed hysterically. We continued to have a good time planni
ng the new layout of the website until Margret came out of the office. “You have one week to get all your sketches perfect, Miss Valerie. We have three different meetings booked on Saturday.”

  “Really?”

  My heart jumped inside my chest, but I couldn’t decide what made it lurch. Was it excitement or fear? I knew Margret was serious about making calls, and she’d been in the industry for so long that she knew every jewelry manufacturer in the greater Los Angeles area, but I guess I never figured they’d take her seriously.

  “But I’m just a kid. I’m not an actual designer.”

  “What can I say? Everything’s easy when you’re a celebrity.”

  “Celebrity?”

  Margret shrugged. “The three who want to meet with you all saw your news report last night.”

  “Well, thank you Kyle Hamilton,” I couldn’t help but mumble.

  I didn’t see or hear from Cara until I got to homeroom Monday. That wasn’t the longest we’ve ever gone without talking to one another, but it had been the most eventful few days of my life, and apparently hers too. No force in the universe could have shut us up during homeroom that morning. Once we were done fighting, of course.

  “Where have you been?” I asked after she stumbled into the room. When I say stumbled, I mean she literally tripped over her feet. She looked like she hadn’t slept since she left me at the festival.

  When she saw me, her face brightened up. At first there was only a giddy squeal. When she was finally able to speak it sounded something like, “HolycrapValerieyouarenotgoingtobelievethis!”

  It’s a good thing I speak Cara. “Let me take a wild guess,” I grumbled. “You went out with Shane after the show, and stayed out all night dancing in some club. Then, you spent all of the following morning texting each other until you both crashed. You woke up a few hours later, went to lunch together where you decided you were soul mates and are now officially a couple.” I laughed when Cara frowned. “Did I leave anything out?”

  “Way to steal all my thunder, V.”

  “Sorry. But you deserved it for not calling me back. I called and texted you like a million times!”