Page 1 of Sex Ed

PROLOGUE

8th April 2011, MIA

I think it might be happening today. Laura said it would happen, but I don’t trust Laura because she’s a massive fan of Justin Bieber (she has a Justin Bieber duvet set) and there was one time she told everyone at school that his tour bus broke down outside her house and he stopped at hers to use the downstairs toilet. Anyway, she sits next to Toby in English, and she reckons when he opened his bag to take out his copy ofPride & Prejudice, she saw that he had a pack of ribbed Durex in there which can only mean one thing.

I’m going to have sex today after school.

It’s no big deal. It’s Toby. I’ve been Toby’s official girlfriend for a year, ever since we got together at that party in the community centre, the one where we all smuggled in alcohol in water bottles and someone’s mum threw a fit and wrote a really angry Facebook post. It’s just sex. With Toby. I know Toby. I think I love Toby. I’ve let him touch my boobs.

Anyway, he might not even want sextoday. Maybe he bought the condoms as a joke. And it will also depend if he’s on the bus. I climb the stairs to the top level of our double decker and scan the heads. I cross my fingers. Crap, he’s here. Be cool.

‘You alright?’ Toby says, turning to look at me. He looks different. Has he had a haircut? He’s definitely wearing product. I didn’t wash my hair today. I wish I had now.

‘You alright?’ I reply, nodding, trying to act chill by tossing my rucksack on the double seat opposite him. Across the way, an older lady watches me, and I can see she’s judging the length of my skirt and the thickness of my foundation. She can swivel.

Toby shifts uncomfortably in his seat then looks at me. Is he going to ask me on the bus?Hey, let’s have sex this afternoon?If he does, that judgy old lady will die. ‘My mum and dad are both on shift, working till late, if you want to come round?’ he asks, casually.

Shit. ‘Yeah…’ I say.

‘We can watch a film or something,’ he suggests. The two boys behind him giggle, elbowing each other. One of them is Leon Mount who once caught his hair alight on a Bunsen burner. I don’t appreciate being the butt of their jokes, so I scowl at them. All I feel is panic. Am I wearing the right pants? Is this how I want to lose my virginity? Since that first kiss at the party, we’ve hung out in our bedrooms, kissing and touching each other, but we’ve never gone the whole way. Mainly because our mums were always downstairs cooking the dinner. I’ve felt his penis. He’s learnt how to squeeze my boobs, because at first he’d just place his hands on them like a human hand bra. I think I love him though. I do love him. I’ve signed my name with his and I’ve picked the canapés at our wedding (crispy prawns). I’ve thought about how our kids would have his swishy hair and my blue eyes. He bought me that giant bear on Valentine’s Day and I had to drag it around all day. We named him Bob. He’s kind and funny and he holds my hand in public and buys me bottles of Cherry Coke. I should just do it with him and get it out of the way, right? It’s just my virginity. I can think of worse people to lose it to. It’s no big deal.

‘We can stop at the Tesco Metro and get some snacks and that…’ I mention. Yeah, we can just eat Skittles and have some sex, you know?

‘Oh no, I’ve got stuff in. It’s cool,’ he says, like he’s prepared a meal to go with the sex.

I am hungry though. Can you have sex on an empty stomach? I only had a doughnut for lunch because the queue at the canteen was so long. And just like that, a million sex questions go through my head. What if I get my period? Can you get pregnant from your first time? Will it hurt?

Toby presses the bell and the bus lurches to a standstill at his stop. It’s time to get off. Those boys are still sniggering, so I stick my middle finger up at them. You can do this, Mia.

I have an overwhelming need to call my sister. She’s at university and she’s definitely had sex because she came back that first Christmas and told us about this boy who had a piercing through his pickle, and she screamed when she saw it. I shouldn’t call it a pickle, should I? Is that just a my-family thing? Pickles and noo-noos, right?

‘You had a good day?’ Toby asks me as we stroll past the parade of shops at the top of his road.

‘I had Geography,’ I say, pulling a face and sighing.

‘Hate Geography,’ he replies.

Then we’re silent. It’s not normally like this. We normally chat shit about people at school and all the beef we’ve witnessed that day. We share headphones, listen to Frank Ocean, dance down the street and throw sweets at each other. But today is different. He can’t even hold my hand. We know what’s going to happen. We get to his house and he finds his keys and puts them in the door.

‘MUM! ARE YOU IN?’ he bellows through the house as we go in, double checking to see if she’s about. There’s an eerie silence. All I can hear is the low hum of his fridge, the creak of his blue front door.

‘Are we going to have sex?’ I blurt out in the hallway.

He looks absolutely petrified. ‘I don’t know. I knew we were going to have the house to ourselves, so I thought… We don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. If you’re not ready…’

I’m sixteen. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready. But then what happens? You can’t just stay a virgin for a lifetime because you’re scared, because you have questions, because you don’t know when’s the right time. I stand there for what feels like forever, watching him wait to hear what I’ll decide, grateful he’s giving me the option to back out.

‘Laura said you bought a pack of ribbed condoms…’

‘I did. Just because if it did happen then I wanted to be prepared. That’s all.’

‘What’s the difference between ribbed and normal?’ I ask him, my only frame of reference being tights and vests when it comes to ribbed.

‘I dunno. They were on offer.’

‘OK. Just when we’re done, make sure you don’t flush it down the toilet because they float back up. That happened to Olly Horne and his mum went ballistic.’

‘But I can’t put it in the bin. What if my mum sees?’

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