R (non-explicit underage sex). Sam backstory, Sam/other. Ness wanted virgin!Sam, Christine issued a challenge … this was the best I could do. Thanks: Christine.
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit.
phase n. 1. A distinct stage of development. 2. A temporary manner, attitude, or pattern of behavior. 3. An aspect; a part. 4. Astron. One of the cyclically recurring apparent forms of the moon or a planet. 5. Phys. a. A stage in a periodic process or phenomenon. b. The fraction of a complete cycle elapsed as measured from a reference point and often expressed as an angle. 6. Chem. a. Any of the forms or states, solid, liquid, gas, or plasma, in which matter can exist, depending on temperature and pressure. b. A discrete homogeneous part of a material or system that is separable from the rest, as ice is from water. 7. Biol. A characteristic form, appearance, or stage of development that occurs in a cycle of distinguishes some individuals of a group.
“Half the interesting things in my life didn’t happen until I turned 15.” ~ Sam, Learning Curve
He was obnoxious and a little cruel — always the center of attention, usually at someone else’s expense. Last year, when she had suddenly gone from a AA to a B, he had mocked her mercilessly, and loudly.
But his hair curled in that certain way, and his eyes were brown like bittersweet chocolate, and he smelled nice and clean, like Ivory soap, and he was the tallest boy in the tenth grade and that seemed to be important. (He slouched except when he was playing basketball, but she slouched a lot, too.) And maybe the biggest point in his favor was that he’d asked — had been asking, constantly, since she’d transferred into his homeroom at the end of eighth grade. He asked crudely, but he asked.
Today, instead, he stopped her in the hall between fourth and fifth period and said, “I’m really sorry about your mom.”
He was nervous. It was her first day back since the funeral.
She thanked him politely, thought about it for a second, and asked him if he wanted to come over to her house after school.
After he left, she stared at herself in the full-length mirror in her room, trying to figure out if she looked any different. She didn’t think so, but it was hard to tell.
She hated her hair. It was straight and boring and her parents had never let her cut it like the popular girls did, all feathery. She usually wore it in a ponytail just because she couldn’t get it to do anything else. And it was light enough that it tinged green, sometimes, from the chlorine that was an inescapable part of her life. (Her coach was making her swim the 400 IM this season, and she hated those first four lengths of butterfly more than anything, especially at six in the morning.)
Her skin was okay. She was lucky. Definitely luckier than Mark had been. She probably owed that to the chlorine, too, though her face usually peeled in the summer and in the winter.
She was too tall, she thought, her arms and legs too long, and her jeans always slung low on her hips because she was too skinny to hold them up. The boys had finally started to catch up to her in height, thank God. Seventh grade had been the worst. But that had been a long way away — a thousand miles away — and it seemed like forever ago.
Her favorite TV shows were Magnum, PI and Nova. Her favorite song was “Tainted Love.” Someday, she was going to fly in space.
At least, that was what she’d always wanted. Today she wasn’t so sure.
As she stood there, turning in front of the mirror, her father called and said he wouldn’t be home for dinner; could she heat up some leftovers for her brother and herself?
She said yes, of course she could, though they both knew Mark wouldn’t be home.
“I slept with Kevin Crowley,” she told Erin and Jenny on a Saturday afternoon. They had been doing their chemistry equations in Jenny’s room; Sam always helped Jenny with her science homework, and Erin was on the swim team (long-distance free; Sam was jealous). Sam wasn’t entirely sure why they liked her. And neither of them had ever known what to say about her mom, but nobody ever knew what to say about her mom — not even her dad.
“You what? With who?” Jenny asked blankly.
Erin took it better. “You had sex? Ohmigod! What was it like?”
Jenny scowled at both of them. “Are you nuts, Sam? You don’t even like him.”
“I like him,” Sam said. “He’s okay.”
“You have to tell us everything! What was it like, what was it like?” Erin again, practically bouncing on Jenny’s pretty floral bedspread.
“I don’t know. It was …” Unable to figure out quite what to say, she settled for, “It was his first time, too.”
“Are you gonna do it again?”
“Is he like your boyfriend now?”
He wasn’t, and she wasn’t really sure why she’d done it. But she didn’t know how to say that. And she knew she couldn’t describe it to them. And she didn’t really want to.
It had been … kind of gross. She didn’t think she liked the smell. His kisses had been wet and sloppy (she knew because she’d kissed exactly three other boys before him). She hadn’t been quite sure what to do with her arms and her legs (too long) and his … thing had been bigger than she’d imagined. She hadn’t really liked the way it looked, meaty-pink and blue-veined, though it was better when he put the rubber on. But once it was inside her — now that, that part she liked. A lot. The way he filled her, like he’d always belonged there. Yes, she’d liked that.
She didn’t know what an orgasm felt like (there was no one she could ask — she’d never have asked her mother anyway — and it wasn’t exactly something she could look up in the library) but she was pretty sure she hadn’t had one. Certainly her universe hadn’t exploded, or anything (and that was probably just a dumb metaphor anyway).
The next morning, in the shower, she’d put her fingers up there and liked that a lot, too. But it wasn’t the same, somehow.
On Saturday night, Kevin took her to a party at a senior’s house — someone her brother probably knew. But she didn’t think Mark would be there.
It wasn’t the kind of party she’d ever have dreamed of going to, before. She drank a beer (she’d had sips lots of times before with her parents’ permission) and Kevin drank four and she let him lead her up to one of the bedrooms. By the pictures and decorations, she guessed it belonged to a much younger sister. There was a big dollhouse in the corner (Sam had always wanted one like that as a kid) and a pink rug.
Her father would kill her if he even knew she was at this party. And she was upstairs in the dark, letting a drunk basketball player slobber on her and touch her and pound into her in a little kid’s bedroom.
And her mother … she didn’t think she could believe in heaven, because the thought of her mother watching made her feel a little sick.
“You are so hot,” Kevin told her before he passed out.
Erin and Jenny both called her the next day. Her father was home and he took messages.
She didn’t call them back. Erin could help Jenny with science. And it wasn’t like Sam herself actually needed to work to get those straight As.
She was late for practice twice that week. She had never, ever been late for practice. Normally that earned you a good bawling out and an extra 500 yards of your least favorite stroke.
All it earned her was a polite nod of greeting, a too-sympathetic smile, and a “Jump in and catch up, Sam.”
She stood on the deck and stared at him for a minute, her cap and goggles clenched tightly behind her back. Erin had broken the rules and was hanging at the edge of the pool between laps, watching her with a little, encouraging smile. Sam pretended not to notice.
In the locker room, after, she was digging her shampoo out of the disordered pile, still dripping water on the floor, when Erin appeared from behind her locker door.
“Are you okay, Sam?”
Sam had a feeling her friend wanted to say much more, but didn’t know how. She pretended not to notice that, too.
“Yeah, of course. Just slept through my alarm.”
Erin bit her lip. Her eyes were a sort of dull hazel and she had too many freckles. She pulled her towel tighter around her shoulders. “That’s … I don’t think that’s what I meant.”
Sam couldn’t say why, but she didn’t like that tone. She let it get to her. She shouldn’t have, but she did. “What did you mean?” she challenged, eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring. She felt like a supreme bitch but it was hard to care.
“I — nothing. I’ll see you in English.”
She still couldn’t find her shampoo, and suddenly she really wanted to slam her locker.
She didn’t.
They never went out anymore, not after that party. She hadn’t liked the clumsy way he’d tried to put his arm around her. She’d shaken it off with an aggressive twitch of her shoulders and a glare she hadn’t been proud of.
“How come your dad’s never home?” Kevin asked one afternoon, in her room. He was lying in her bed, and she was kneeling nearby, wearing a Disneyland t-shirt her mother used to sleep in.
Sam shrugged as she sorted through her tapes. She wasn’t really looking for anything but she needed him to think she was. The radio was playing a Cars song she was really, really sick of.
“He’s at work, that’s all.”
“Even after …?”
She kind of wished somebody would just say it, just once. The d-word. But she was kind of glad they didn’t; she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it.
“He’s really good at his job, Kevin. He has a lot of responsibility.” She tossed her head, liking the way her hair flew behind her shoulder. “You wouldn’t understand.”
He already knew better than to ask about Mark. At least, she thought he knew better, because he never had. He had two younger brothers he didn’t like much.
She used to like Mark. He’d stopped liking her first, though.
Kevin was quiet for a few minutes, and Sam was sure he was about to say something really embarrassing.
“You should come over for dinner tonight,” he said, with something in his voice Sam thought she should like, but didn’t. “My parents want to meet you.”
She looked up. “Your parents know about me?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, a little.” His cheeks slowly turned pink as she watched.
“I can’t,” she said, not sure why she was angry. “I have homework.”
“Your homework takes you about ten minutes.” He was trying to tease her.
“That’s not true,” she said, refusing to get the joke. “Anyway you don’t even do yours, how would you know?”
He shrugged, but she could tell she’d hurt him. Why had she said that, anyway?
“Whatever,” he said. “Come over here.”
She didn’t object as he pulled her by the arm, dragged her back under the covers. She glanced at the soiled rubber on her nightstand; she didn’t have any more. He always brought them.
“We can’t,” she said.
But he held her down, on her back. Slid down her legs to push them apart, his head making a tent in the blanket, and then did something she’d only read about. She had a feeling he’d been reading too, though more likely he’d just been talking to his basketball buddies. The season hadn’t started yet so they spent a lot of time sitting around. (She could imagine the conversation: “Yeah, man, you gotta kiss her down there and watch her squirm.” “You gotta what?”)
She let him keep going — it felt good and he seemed to like it, too — until she couldn’t take it anymore. The pressure was building too fast, it was too much, she was going to scream. She didn’t want to scream.
She kicked him out of her bed, out of her house, home to his parents for dinner.
It was between fourth and fifth period, again, when Kevin stopped by her locker. He always came by her locker between fourth and fifth period. She smiled sideways at him and kept looking for her chemistry notebook.
“Hey, Sam,” he said.
“Hey.” Then she realised that some of the basketball players were watching them from across the hall. Seniors and juniors. That was strange.
Kevin put his hand behind her head. Surprised, she looked at him just in time for him to lean in to kiss her. She didn’t like that. She pulled away.
“Not here,” she whispered. “You know I don’t like to.” She’d never wanted to make out at school, why was he trying it now? And why were the basketball players snickering?
“Just a kiss, Sam. Come on …”
“I said no.” Aha, there was the notebook. She tucked it under her arm with her heavy text.
He leaned close to her again, so only she could hear. “They don’t believe we’re going out.”
“So what? I don’t care what they think. And we’re not going out.”
She registered the way he recoiled, like she’d hit him. “What, we’re just screwing?” he asked loudly enough for the others to hear.
“Kevin!” She was more puzzled than angry.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? You’ll screw me but you won’t let me kiss you?”
People were noticing; some stared. Luckily there were no teachers nearby. She looked around a little wildly, and saw Erin and Jenny in the doorway of the chemistry lab. They were both pretending, very hard, not to be paying attention. Sam thought that was kind.
“Go to hell, Kevin,” she said softly. She left him standing there and shouldered past her friends into chemistry class, before the bell rang. They both tried to catch her eye — their seats were all next to each other, Jenny in the middle — but Sam refused to look up. She hadn’t finished her homework. Still she got every answer right when Mrs. Cho called on her. Mrs. Cho always called on Sam whenever anybody else made a mistake.
Sam hated that. But she liked being right.
There were two report cards in the mail when she got home from the swim meet that night. She hadn’t even known they were coming out. She always knew when grades were coming out.
She put Mark’s on the kitchen table, wondering cruelly if he’d even passed anything. She was pretty sure he’d been skipping classes.
Her own she opened slowly. She knew what she’d find. Her parents had always taken her out for ice cream when she got a perfect report card; she wondered if her dad still would.
The front door opened just as she thought that. “Sam? You home?”
“In here, Dad.”
He was still wearing his uniform. He never used to do that. “Hi, honey. Sorry I couldn’t get to your meet. How’d it go?”
“We won.” She’d finished second in the 400 IM and her time had qualified her for a big invitational in November, but she didn’t say so. “Report cards came.” She handed him hers and noticed his eyes drifting to Mark’s.
“This is great, Sam. I’m so proud of you.” His voice didn’t sound right. She couldn’t figure out why.
“Ice cream this weekend?” she asked.
“Yeah, yeah, of course.” Then he added quickly, “We can go tonight. Do you want to go tonight?”
She didn’t understand her father’s tight smile and she didn’t want to stay in that room. “Too much homework.”
“Right. Homework. That’s my smart girl. Did you eat?”
“We got McDonald’s on the way back. I’m … gonna go upstairs and finish my trigonometry. Okay?”
“Great report card, Sam,” he said. She thanked him and turned to leave, but looked back from the hall. He was sitting down at the table, reaching for Mark’s report card. It was like his arm was too heavy to lift.
Trig. Yes, she’d lose herself in her trig. Numbers made a lot more sense than people, anyway.
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