Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner

‘Mr. Bobby Carver, not until there’s a ring on my finger.’ ” She touched the class ring that she wore around her neck, as if to reassure herself of Bobby’s commitment, and how one ring would lead to another.
    “Did you like it?” Jo asked. Lynnette tilted her head sideways as she considered.
    “It was kind of like brushing my teeth,” she finally said. “Or, no, that’s not quite it. Maybe it was like clapping. Just, you know. Clap clap clap squirt. Then it’s over.” Their sneakered feet crunched against the cinders. “I don’t know,” Lynnette said, sighing. “It was kind of exciting to see how excited he was, you know? To know that I could make him feel like that. But I didn’t really feel anything at all.” She sighed again. “Maybe real sex will feel better.”
    “Maybe.” Jo was secretly relieved that Lynnette hadn’t enjoyed ministering to Bobby Carver. Lynnette interpreted her response as an indication of Jo’s frustration over her own lackluster love life.
    “It’s going to happen for you,” she said, reaching up to pat Jo’s shoulder. “You’ll find the right guy.”
    Jo shrugged. She’d been out with plenty of boys, usually on double dates with Lynnette. She knew their moves. At the movie shows, the Redford or the Senate, the boy would stretch his arm up high, then casually drape it around her shoulders. At the Bel-Air drive-in, they’d try to get her into the back seat, and at school dances, they’d ask if she needed some fresh air, but their clammy hands on her shoulders, their cool, wormy lips against her mouth had all left her feeling less than nothing.
    “Have you ever . . .” Lynnette looked at her, a brief glance from underneath her curled bangs. Jo saw her cheeks blushing pink. “Have you ever touched yourself?”
    “Sometimes,” she said, after making sure there was no chance that any of their classmates would be able to hear them. A few times, when she’d been fastening a sanitary napkin to her belt, her fingers would drift over the soft triangle of hair between her legs. There was, she had discovered, a tender place right at the top, and when her fingers brushed against it, jolts of pleasure would shoot through her lower belly, making her nipples get hard. The feeling was so strong that it frightened her, and she would hastily takeher fingers away. She looked at her friend, gathering her nerve. “Have you?”
    Lynnette’s lipsticked mouth curved up in a smile, and when she spoke, her voice was so low that Jo could hardly hear. “When I went to Camp Tanuga last summer,” she began. Jo moved so close that their shoulders were touching. “One of the counselors there really liked me.”
    Jo nodded, unsurprised. Everyone liked Lynnette. When she realized what Lynnette meant, about this girl who’d really liked her, she felt her body flush again, this time with jealousy.
    “She had something that she let me borrow.”
    “What?” Jo asked. “What is it?” She felt envious of this counselor, angry that Lynnette had waited all this time to tell her, and, above everything else, desperate to keep Lynnette talking.
    “I can’t tell you.” Lynnette giggled. She’d turned a color past pink, closer to red. “But I can show you. After school,” she said, and gave Jo a saucy smile. “My house. I am going to change your life.”
    *  *  *
    Lynnette’s family had once lived in a house like Jo’s, but when Lynnette was in junior high, her father, who’d been working at an accounting firm in Detroit, got promoted. He moved his family into a much bigger house, a four-bedroom redbrick mock Tudor with a finished basement and an in-law suite. The Bobecks’ house had a kitchen with two ovens and creamy white Formica countertops, a living room with a bricked-in wood-burning fireplace and a big color television set, a card table with padded chairs and special lighting where Mrs. Bobeck played bridge. The basement featured pine-paneled walls, a pool table, and