I crossed one leg over the other, satisfied that underneath the horribly thick black pants I wore as required by “school policy,” I could feel the warmth of my purple-and-pink-striped socks. They were enough to earn me detention, but he’d never see them.

Ms. Conner paced around the podium situated on the stage, the massive white projector screen behind her. She had to be the sweetest, gentlest, and clearly the most uncomfortable one in the room. Her pale pink sweater hugged her tiny shoulders, the light blue blouse she wore underneath tightly tucked into a floor-length black skirt. Tanner hand-selected our school nurse to run this assembly every year, even though she fumbled over her words whenever the discussion even came close to sex. Which it rarely did at Wilmont.

“What about someone else?” I finally whispered back at Hannah.

“What, like a teacher?” she scoffed, her blue eyes narrowing on Ms. Conner.

“Or, I don’t know,” I said, glancing to the right, where the most popular seniors sat. Girls like Sabrina and Morgan. The ones with shiny hair and perfectly polished nails. The ones who always looked like they walked off the pages of Teen Vogue. “Them?” It wasn’t a secret that Sabrina and Morgan’s clique knew their way around guys…and girls…or sometimes both at the same time, if the rumors were to be believed.

Brandon included. Not that I cared where my ex-boyfriend had wound up.

“You’re joking, right?”

“I’m trying to help.”

“I know,” she said. “But seriously? If I approached them it would be all over school in, like, two seconds.”

“So?” I said. “Everyone knows you and Jake have been together forever. Who cares?”

“I know that,” she answered. “But I would rather the entire school not know I’m a complete loser when it comes to this kind of stuff. Just because we’ve done it multiple times doesn’t mean I’m confident I know what I’m doing.”

My cheeks heated again. “If you’re a loser, that makes me a social reject.”

“You know I didn’t mean it like that.” She wrapped her arm around my shoulders.

“It’s fine.” I shrugged. “Look, I’m not dying to hand out my V-card, but I hate that I’m totally useless to you right now. You should be able to talk to someone about this stuff and not feel like you’re breaking the damn law.”

She giggled. “It always feels like that.”

“It shouldn’t.”

“Well,” she said, lowering her voice even more despite the chatter in the room. “It may not be that way anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

Hannah glanced around to make sure no one was listening. “You know my mom’s on the review board, right? The one Tanner answers to?”

“Yeah.”