when i got pretty

A Story by natalie

first post...hope it's liked. constructive criticism? thanks! (I didn't work it in yet, but the girl's name is Lana. For the record.)

I felt different, coming home from Donovan's house. Pretty, almost. Like the girls at school, bright and golden. I felt like more than I had been since I moved to this pretty city.

Pretty. That's what Donovan had said. You really are pretty, brushing my hair back with sex-hazed eyes. I trembled, even though I was thinking Why bother saying that when you've already got the girl in bed?

Pretty? Looking in the bathroom mirror I saw: short red hair, green eyes, pale skin and the freckles that got me teased in elementary school back in Tulsa. Lips thin but red (maybe from kissing, I thought). I noticed a zit forming on my forehead.

I had never thought of myself as pretty. But a lot had changed since we came to California. I had never thought of myself as the type to hang with the older boys, smoking joints in Michael's house by the beach in Venice, or at Donovan's up in the hills. Or the type to do a thing like I did.

Michael was my first friend at school, friendly among the strange "new girl" stares, and I was grateful to him for that. He introduced me to his friends, and to Donovan. Donovan, like the Scottish singer I loved. Dark hair, deep eyes, and a sleepy surfer-boy smile. He smelled like Dr. Bronner's hemp soap and had guitar-playing hands and he was the first boy I really wanted to touch me.

At Michael's, we talked records. Donovan was into the old stuff: Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane. Stuff nobody liked back in Tulsa. He invited me over to play me some amazing band I hadn't heard. Lord, you don't know how long I spent deciding what to wear. Trying to look not like I tried, but...pretty.

So I took the bus up to his house at noon, in a thin sundress. God, it was a hot day. Heat rising up from the sidewalk and I hoped I wasn't sweating too much. My stomach was jumping and I kept checking my pulse; a nervous habit (among many). He answered the door, half-stoned probably, and invited me in to his air-conditioned house. Big. A rich hippie, I guess (kind of like I was, admittedly). A typical boy's bedroom (but still neater than mine!), with a Hendrix poster on his wall.

It was awkward. We'd never hung out in less than a big group, and what was there to say? He put on the record...a slow, weeping guitar riff flowed out. It sounded sexy, really.

"Mmm. Sounds good so far."

"Yeah...I could fall into this album. You like?"

"Yeahhh." I always spoke little and slowly, trying to sound cool, Californian.

"I'm glad." My lord, that smile.

And then...more silence. We sat listening. Or at least I was half listening. Half tingling from how close he was. And then he looked at me. Oh my god. And moved towards me...

I'd only kissed one boy before, back in Tulsa. A boyfriend for three weeks, a sweet boy on the baseball team with light brown hair. This was....totally different. Electric, hot, terrifying. Donovan was kissing me Donovan was kissing me and he was running his hands up my shirt and good girls didn't do this back home but I wanted it so bad.

After, he was holding me, and I was scared by how good it felt. I didn't expect him to...I may have been new to this, but I knew where my standing was: a "hookup," like Michael and the boys talked about. But where on the scale was being held, being called pretty? I didn't know where I was.