Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume Read Free Page B

a future for us because I was afraid of what would happen in the aftermath of our breakup. But I wasn’t very good at faking it, either, and I spent the greater portion of my high school years acting like a bitch, blaming every frustrated attraction on too much PMS or not enough sleep. Why B. put up with this, especially with so many other options available, I’ll never understand. Perhaps he was driven by the same fears of what would happen if he stopped.
    I’m not sure when or how we broke up, and I would be making it up if I said otherwise. I remember a protracted series of dramatic fights and exhausting crying fits, of jealous flirtations and violent empty threats, and a failed attempt (his) at one last boozy fling for old time’s sake. I went to my senior prom with B.’s best friend, an arrangement that indicates we split well before graduation. I cannot recall the final break, and this monumental event is mysteriously absent from the pages of my journal. But I don’t think I’ve blocked out the details as a defense mechanism. I prefer to believe that I’ve let go of the most bitter memories because I didn’t need to hang onto them.
    Not too long after high school, I fell in love again. I had my heart broken. I later regretted not sleeping with someone I cared about deeply and then got involved with someone else who should have never been more than just a friend. I withheld empty promises of tomorrow. And finally, I made the only lifelong vow worth believing in.
    I moved on. And B. did, too.
    I still can’t help but wish my mom had let me read Forever from start to finish instead of showing me that lame filmstrip. By the last chapter, it’s clear that Katherine and Michael got over each other. Their lost love wasn’t a tragedy. It was inevitable. And if I had read more than just the good parts, maybe I would’ve mustered the courage to break up with B. sooner, sparing us both many tears and much pain in the process.
    Then again, maybe not.
    Probably not.
    We were fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old and had no clue what we were doing. We were each other’s trial and error, as all first loves are. And I’m not convinced Judy Blume’s wisdom would have helped one bit back then.
    I was at the library to return the book—my husband browsing down the shelves, our three-year-old son grabbing my hand—when I realized that I’d never noticed the ellipses in the title: Forever …Only after a few decades of living, of loving and being loved in return, can you comprehend that Forever …means something very different than Forever. Only then can you understand that any vow uttered by an adoring adolescent is accompanied by invisible ellipses. “Forever…Then. Now.”
    Megan McCafferty is the author of Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings, and Charmed Thirds. She is currently working on the fourth Jessica Darling novel. Megan also contributed an essay to It’s a Wonderful Lie: The Truth About Life in Your Twenties, but she prefers hiding behind fiction, especially when the topic is sex. Until she wrote for this anthology, her parents had no idea how or when she lost her virginity.

We Interrupt Our
Regularly Scheduled Programming
for a Judy Blume Moment
    Jennifer O’Connell
    Someone else’s birthday isn’t exactly a milestone that’s supposed to remain ingrained in your memory forever. Your first day of kindergarten, the day you got your braces off, senior prom—those were the significant moments that got counted down and circled on the Ziggy calendar hanging inside our closet doors.
    But I remember one party better than I remember my own. It wasn’t just any ordinary seventh-grade birthday. It was Christine McCall’s, and Christine was going out with Robbie—an eighth grader. Christine’s wasn’t any ordinary birthday party. It was a boy-girl party complete with AC/DC’s “Back in Black” on