“Laila had tried not to think about these things, had tried not to notice. It felt furious and heated, humiliating and childish, as if physicality were a language she was supposed to have learned, and here she was in senior year, surrounded by a horde of native speakers, unable to translate the most basic concepts.” Her inexperience didn’t feel charming or virtuous, like she was some good-girl persona from a movie. A barrier of shame as impermeable as plexiglas walled her off from everything sexual, every thought, every action, even something as small as the difference in connotation between ‘pretty’ and ‘hot.’ Hannah had teased her about this once and had stopped when Laila didn’t come close to smiling. Not even her celebrity crushes, not even avatar of perfection Samuel Marquez. Laila couldn’t talk about anybody like that. The original thought had been, Wow she is hot, and the sentence had transformed on the way out. Her voice stuttered across the last word.
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