Margaret Lacey is a Lesbian

She was groggy, cranky, and wanted to stay in bed most mornings. She was wrestled out from between the sheets by a sense of guilt that came from skipping class, and an intense paranoia of being late and that somehow causing grave repercussions in her later life. She pulled a light pink cotton dress over her head, and was delighted to remember that it had pockets she could stow a lighter in, instead of keeping it in her sock or shoe all day. She had a craving for oat bran, but could find none, so settled with toast. It was the average beginning to an average day.

A cold, bumpy ride on a shitty old bus did not serve to make her less groggy or cranky, simply serving to make her feel cold and bumped about. A boy with a leather jacket, slicked back black hair, jeans just wrinkled enough to prove that he cared passionately about not caring, and eyes so soft, brown, and beautiful they might make a weak-hearted person cry on sight moseyed up to her.

He plunked down in the seat, his legs and arms splaying in a display of complete nonchalance that can only be achieved from lots and lots of painful practise. He brushed back his artistically placed cowlick, allowing it to fall back into its groomed position, and grinned a grin that seemed incomplete without a flash of bright light and a *ding*. His lovely brown eyes were framed in eyelashes that Twiggy was currently marketing at 8 quid a pack. He was practically batting them at her, now, but her eyes were dutifully closed as she pressed her forehead against the seat in front of her own.

“You’re Margaret Lacey,” he declared in a voice that belonged to love songs.

“Go away,” she stated in a voice that belonged back asleep, in her own objective opinion.

“I just have a question for you.”

“Go away.”

“Are you a,” he paused, and leaned in to sensually whisper against her ear, “a virgin?”

She opened an eye after the same manner that dinosaurs peered at the meteor before it struck them out of existence and into museums and gas pumps for eternity.

“Sure I am.” Her voice was deadpan.

“Really? I heard—“

“I really don’t care. Completely clean. Good Christian girl, all that. Go away.”

And that was the end of her brief relationship with Chad Lester, “The Douche-bag From the School Bus.”

In the yard after school, Margaret Lacey and her group of smoking compatriots were grouped around the general area the bus would eventually pull up to. They were laughing and snorting and guffawing at things that would not be found funny even by the most easily amused, were they to be relayed. The girls were enjoying themselves thoroughly, as young girls will in the company of other young girls. There were cute boys in proximity, giving Margaret Lacey that peculiar edge to her laugh and her action, being vaguely terrified that she might be being watched by someone with a nicely shaped bottom.

A boy that had been seen in propinquity to one Stuart Sutcliffe sidled up, much in the same fashion as the boy on the bus. His light brown hair was genuinely ruffled, and from the slight chapping on one of his cheekbones, one could guess that this ruffling had occurred in a fight. He looked very much like he wanted to look tough, with a cigarette dangling lazily from his lips, and his hands stuffed in zippered jacket pockets. Another cigarette was placed behind his ear, and as he approached, Margaret Lacey found herself imagining all the other places he was hiding cigarettes, such as in his hair, or in his shirt. She pictured a stiff wind blowing and dozens of smokes shaking free and disappearing into the distance.

“Aye,” he began.

Gwendolyn and Margaret Lacey both made desperate attempts to avoid eye contact with him, but just short of staring soulfully into each other’s eyes, only Gwendolyn was able to succeed. Margaret Lacey turned to look at him with all the defiance she could muster, and really made an effort to tone down the lust that was probably seeping out of her.

“You’re…Pete? John? Allan?” she stumbled through the names. “I could keep listing names but I really don’t know what yours is. You’re one of Stu’s friends, though, and—,“ She trailed off in time to avoid making compliments that could ruin whatever cool she was maintaining. (What she’d had in mind was probably something along the lines of—, ‘And you can take me here right now if you ask nicely.’ It was probably good that she’d neglected to say that.)

“Pete John Allan the Sixteenth, Esquire,” he said, coking his head backwards so that he was looking across his nose at the girls, squinting. “Pretty ladies like you can call me John for short.”

Margaret Lacey went from vapid lust to slight disdain. Although much prettier than the other teddy’s who’d come to question her on her moral and sexual backgrounds, he was not acting entirely different. His words were amusing, but his body language was off putting.

“Nah I get it now. You can piss off.” She turned back to Gwendolyn, and waited for Gwendolyn’s eyes to leave his ass to take her cue to relax.

“Was he being a prick? He seemed funny, maybe even charming or something,” Gwendolyn said, once Pete John Allan the Sixteenth, Esquire was out of earshot.

“He looked like an asshole who wanted to prove his masculinity by getting me to show him my vagina,” she stated with a shrug and a sigh. “Too bad, too. He’s cute as hell.”

“He probably has a tiny dick anyway. Needing to prove himself, you know,” Gwendolyn offered, in a bid for condolence.

“But that ass was so desirable.” Both their heads shook solemnly in disappointment as the bus squealed to a stop.