So now she was at this new school, which had been founded thirty years after Emlen and had barely any ivy at all. Melville had a good reputation locally, but it wasn’t a nationally known school the way that Emlen was, and she knew, from the way his lips had tightened in his face and his hands had tightened on the steering wheel when he’d dropped her off, that her father was disappointed.
Oh, well, Beatrice thought, and tried to ignore the twinge of disappointing her dad. On her left, two boys were staring at her. As she watched, one of them whispered something to the other, and they both sniggered. Beatrice was especially proud of that day’s look: an ankle-length prairie-style dress with many ruffles and a petticoat under its skirt and a loose-fitting cardigan with pearl buttons that she’d bought for six dollars at the Thrift for AIDS shop in Queen Village on top. Her hair had been cut in a chin-length bob and she’d dyed it a silvery lavender over the weekend. She wore knee socks and her favorite canvas Chuck Taylor basketball sneakers on her feet. She dressed to please herself, and to feel comfortable, and if these boys believed that her body was an object that existed for their pleasure, she’d be happy to tell them otherwise.
On her right, her old classmate Doff had pulled out her phone and had it half-hidden in her lap. Beatrice could see what she was looking up: PLAN B NEAR ME and PLAN B CHEAP and DOES PLAN B ON AMAZON WORK and IS PLAN B ON AMAZON REAL.
Oh, dear. Beatrice was a virgin. She’d never had sex, let alone a pregnancy scare. The year before, her mother—she still shuddered at the memory—had come into her bedroom one night. Beatrice had just gotten through straightening things up. Her favorite books （Frankenstein and The Sandman and The Gashlycrumb Tinies, the collected works of Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti） were in neat rows on her bookshelf. Her lavender-scented candle was burning, she’d made herself a cup of tea, and she was getting ready to sort through her sewing kit when her mom had knocked at her door. “Do you have a minute to talk?”
Before Beatrice could answer, her mother came and sat down on Beatrice’s bed, in the gray fleece overalls she insisted on wearing around the house （Beatrice thought she would actually die of shame if her mom ever wore them out in public. Twice, she’d tried to sneak the overalls out of the dryer and into the trash, but, both times, her mom had rescued them. “Oh, sorry,” Bea had said innocently. “I thought they were rags”）。
“I want to talk to you about sex before you go to boarding school,” her mom had announced.
Cringe. “Okay.”
“Now, I know you’ve taken biology, right?” her mom began, in a strangely upbeat tone, smiling like she was trying to impersonate someone she’d seen on daytime TV. “And sex ed in sixth grade? So you know all the names of the parts, and what goes where.”
Oh my God, Beatrice thought. Her mom had flour on her midsection and crumbs on her bosom. She’d been making brioche, and she smelled like yeast and sugar. It was like a loaf of bread had invaded her room. A loaf of bread that wanted to talk about sex.
“And, you know, now that you’ve entered puberty…”
Beatrice prayed for a tornado, a tsunami, a meteor to crash through the earth’s atmosphere and through her house’s roof and to somehow make her mother stop talking. She prayed for a supermoon to cause the tides to surge and sweep her house away. A hurricane would do nicely. But no meteorological event was coming to save her… and, she realized, her mother was at least as uncomfortable as she was. Which meant that maybe she could have some fun.
“I wanted to talk to you about the emotional part of it.” Her mother made a point of looking right into her eyes. “When girls have sex, their hearts get involved, too. Whether you want that to happen or not. I think that women are just built that way.” Her mom had a faraway look on her face, like maybe she was thinking about someone she’d had sex with, once. Ew.
“How do you know I even want to have sex with guys? Or with anyone?” Beatrice had asked, just to make trouble. First her mom had looked shocked, then she’d hurriedly smoothed out her face, which only made it look like she was trying super-hard not to look shocked. Which was exactly what Beatrice knew would happen. Her mom loved to talk about how progressive and accepting she was, how happy she was that her brother lived in a world where he could marry the man he loved. But of course, Beatrice thought smugly, it would be different if it was her own daughter.
Her mom had cleared her throat, rubbing her hands up and down her fleece-covered legs. “Well, whoever you end up having sex with—if you have sex with anyone—that person can hurt you. I’m not going to tell you to wait for marriage, but I hope you’ll wait until you’re older, and strong enough to handle getting your heart broken.”