Chapter 1

A boy grows up too fast, and misses some key lessons along the way.

I was twelve when I lost my virginity.

It wasn't to a girlfriend, or a sibling, or an older woman. It wasn't to a friend, or a stranger, or a mentor. It wasn't to a boy, or a girl, or a family member, or a pet.

It was to an angel.

I know now that's a word that gets tossed around a lot. Pickup lines, Christmas plays, terms of endearment, pop tunes. But what the word means is "divine messenger", or something close enough to that, and that's how I'm using it.

Her name was Suzy.

This isn't my story. It's hers.

I met Suzy on the first day of sixth grade. We had gone to different elementary schools, and we didn't have any sports or activities or clubs in common. We'd never have met if not for Ms. Whitaker's fifth period language arts class.

That was right after lunch, and it was the only one of my classes that didn't have at least three or four of my friends in it. In fact, there were none. Suzy sat next to me, and so it was only natural for me to start talking to her. Not only was I full of testosterone and adrenaline from the social and physical workout that eating with friends followed by playing soccer represented, and in need of an outlet, but she was beautiful. Not hot, not pretty, not cute, not stunning, not gorgeous. She was beautiful, in the sense that a single glimpse of her, a single word from her, was like a work of art. A longer look or a sentence put the entire Renaissance to shame singlehandedly. Eye contact and conversation were like drugs.

I'm not ashamed to say I was addicted to both within the five minutes it took Ms. Whitaker to arrive and get us settled down.

Everyone else had the same reaction to Suzy I did, and most girls would get a bit of a swollen head from that. I'd like to say Suzy didn't, but that would be unfair. She knew exactly how she affected people, and she took it in stride. She didn't brag about it or inflate her sense of self-worth over it — she had never known anything else. She'd never done the "no one else gets this sort of attention, that makes me special" thing. She viewed it more as a responsibility than anything else. In the standard movie plot where the hero is shy and unpopular and no one but the beautiful, smart, popular heroine will talk to him, she was the heroine. She treated everyone the same way, caring and thoughtful and always putting others first. There was only one kid in the school who truly appreciated it.

No, it wasn't me. I was used to people caring about me and putting me first. I had always been the smartest and the quickest and usually the strongest. I was, if not the most popular sixth grader at the school, definitely in the top five. All I recognized in her was that she was one of the twenty or thirty people who could actually follow my train of thought, and as such one of the twenty or thirty who I ever talked to about my actual thoughts. She was one of my closest friends inside a week, and I wanted to get into her pants after about half a second, and that was all.

The kid who appreciated it was named Matthew Brust. Never Matt or Matty for him, he was a Matthew and everyone could tell. Shy without really being introverted, nerdy without really being brainy, he was kind of an every-kid, though I didn't learn that term until I was a freshman. Everyone sympathized with him in their hearts, but middle school is a jungle, and Suzy was the only one fearless enough to actually translate that into treating him well. Maybe it was just that she had infinite political capital and that meant she could do whatever she damn well pleased, but she'd never have gotten that without being the sort of person who would always go out of her way to talk to Matthew. I admired the way she always defended him, even when I was the one she was defending him from, but I'd never have admitted that then.

Three months into sixth grade, the school had its first dance that our year was allowed to go to. It was announced in fifth period, I asked Suzy as they were still giving out the details, and she smiled and said yes without even thinking about it. She genuinely liked everyone, but I was one of her closest friends too — close enough that we could share surface thoughts, but not close enough to share inner feelings. It's middle school, almost no one's close enough for that. Then again, Susy's inner feelings were always out there for anyone to see. It took me way too long to realize that, though.