Lost It

Chapter One\ I didn't start out my junior year of high school planning to lose my virginity to Benjamin Easter — a senior — at his parents' cabin in Island Park underneath a sloppily patched, unseaworthy, upside-down canoe. Up to that point in my life, I'd been somewhat of a prude who'd avoided the outdoors, especially the wilderness, for the sole purpose that I didn't want to be eaten alive.\ I'm from Idaho. The true West. And if there's a beast indigenous to North America that can kill you, it probably lives here. My whole life, well-meaning people have tried to alleviate my fear of unpredictable, toothy carnivores.\ But I was never fooled by the pamphlets handed to me by tan-capped park rangers during the seven-day camping trip that my parents forced upon me every summer. The tourist literature wanted you to believe that you were safe as long as you hung your food in a tree and didn't try to snap pictures of the buffalo within goring distance. Seriously, when in the presence of a buffalo, isn't any distance within goring distance?\ And they expect intelligent people to believe that a bear can't smell menstrual blood? A bear's nose is more sensitive than a dog's. Every Westerner knows that. In my opinion, if you're having your period and you're stupid enough to pitch a tent in Yellowstone Park, you're either crazy or suicidal. Maybe both.\ It's clear why losing my virginity outdoors, in the wilderness, with Benjamin Easter should be taken as an enormous shock. I could have been eaten by a mountain lion, mauled by a grizzly bear, or (thanks to some people my father refers to as "troublemaking tree huggers") torn to pieces by a pack of recently relocated gray wolves.\ Of course, I wasn't. To be completely honest, I may be overstating the actual risk that was involved. It happened in December. The bears were all hibernating. And the event didn't end up taking that long. Plus, like I already said, we were hidden underneath a canoe.\ But the fact that I lost it in a waterproof sleeping bag on top of a patch of frozen dirt with Benjamin Easter is something that I'm still coming to terms with.\ I can't believe it. Even though I've had several days to process the event. I let a boy see me completely naked, and by this I mean braless and without my underpants. I let a boy I'd known for less than four months bear witness to the fact that my right breast was slightly smaller than my left one. And would I do it again?\ We did do it again. After the canoe, in the days that followed, we did it two more times. I remember them well. Honestly, I remember them very well. Each moment is etched into my mind like a petroglyph. After the third and final time, I watched as he rolled his body away from mine. With my ring finger, I tussled his curly brown hair. Then, I fell asleep. When I woke up, Ben was dressed again, kissing me good-bye. I find myself returning to this moment often. Like it's frozen in time. Sadly, you can't actually freeze time.\ Last night, Ben told me, "You're acting outrageous." He said this while inserting a wooden spoon into the elbow-end of my plaster cast. He was trying to rescue the hamster. The hamster had been my idea. I'd just bought it for him. I wanted him to take it to college and always think of me, his broken-armed first love. But the rodent had weaseled its way into my cast. I hadn't realized that hamsters were equipt with burrowing instincts. I also had no idea how to make a boy stay in love with me. Hence, the pet hamster.\ It's been hours since I've talked to Ben. Since the hamster episode. And the argument that followed the hamster episode. That night Ben told me to stop calling him. He was serious. I told him to have a happy New Year. And he hung up on me. The boy I'd lost it with in a sleeping bag in the frozen dirt had left me with nothing but a dial tone.\ I swear, the day I woke up and started my junior year of high school, Benjamin Easter wasn't even on my radar. I didn't know a thing about leukemia. And because I was raised by deeply conservative people, who wouldn't let me wear mascara or attend sex education classes at Rocky Mountain High School, I wasn't even aware that I had a hymen or that having sex would break it.\ Actually, in the spirit of full disclosure and total honesty, I should mention that my parents only became born again rather recently, at about the time I hit puberty, following a serious grease fire in the kitchen. Before that, they only ventured to church on major holidays. Hence, my life became much more restricted and we gave up eating deep-fried foods.\ The day I started my junior year, I woke up worrying about the size of my feet. Once dressed, looking at myself in my full-length bedroom mirror, they struck me as incredibly long and boatlike. I squished them into a pair of shoes I'd worn in eighth grade, brown suede loafers. They pinched, but gave my feet the illusion of looking regular-size instead of Cadillac-size. Then I noticed a newly risen zit. Of course, under the cover of darkness, it had cowardly erupted in the center of my forehead. I held back my brown bangs and popped it. Then I dabbed the surrounding area with a glob of beige-colored Zit-Be-Gone cream.\ I started the first day of my junior year of high school zitless and basically happy. I was sixteen and feeling good. I didn't have any major issues. Okay, that's not entirely true. For weeks I'd been growing increasingly concerned about Zena Crow, my overly dramatic best friend. She'd been going through a rocky stretch and had been talking incessantly about building a bomb. Not a big bomb. Just one that was big enough to blow up a poodle.\ Copyright © 2007 by Kristen Tracy

\ Publishers WeeklyReaders will be immediately drawn to this hilarious and heartfelt first novel about a girl who falls in love—and has her first sexual experience—and tries to let go of her fears. Tess Whistle lives in Idaho with paranoid parents, who "became born again" after a kitchen fire. The book begins with an account of how she loses her virginity, then flashes back to the start of junior year, when she expected to stay a virgin until she is "at least engaged." Tess has plenty of phobias, mostly of the natural world where she could be "torn to pieces by a pack of recently relocated gray wolves." Just before her whole life crumbles, Benjamin Easter transfers to her school. Tess falls intensely in love without realizing "that you can't depend on another person to provide your own balance." And there's no doubt that Tess's life is out of balance: Her best friend is building a bomb, claiming she wants to blow up a poodle, her parents run off to join a survival camp, and Tess tells Ben she is diabetic as way of explaining her "juvenile" apple juice box, then maintains the lie. Readers may be so busy laughing out loud at the eccentric characters and outrageous plotting that they may not realize how much they have grown to empathize with desperate Tess until her relationship is in crisis. Readers will fall in love with this offbeat story—and its rich lesson about living a life without guarantees. Ages 14-up. (Jan.)\ Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ VOYA\ - Lois Parker-Hennion\ Sixteen-year-old Tess Whistle lives in Idaho and is a junior in high school. Her parents are born-again Christians, and Tess believes that because she does not even have cable TV, she is much less worldly than other teens, especially her best friend, Zena. The girls dream of colleges like NYU and UCLA. When Tess first meets Ben, she is embarrassed to have a boxed apple juice so she lies and tells him that she is diabetic. As a cancer survivor, he is very understanding about her condition. But Tess's life is about to change dramatically. Zena gets sent away for blowing up the stuffed poodle that belongs to the daughter of her father's girlfriend. Then Tess's mother and later her father leave home to join a wilderness survival camp in Utah. Tess's grandmother, who has recently won the lottery, comes to stay with Tess and buys her a car. Ben and Tess get together a few times, and Tess even goes to Ben's for Thanksgiving dinner. They have sex for the first time in a sleeping bag under the canoe at his parent's lake house on a cold winter night. Later while Tess and her grandmother are driving to Utah to visit her parents at Christmastime, they get into an accident although no one is badly injured-except for the moose. A lot happens in this quirky novel, but the events seem less serious as told by Tess, who observes it all with a cynical wit. Other characters possess the same odd sense of humor and are minimally developed so it is difficult to care too much. Lighthearted and fun, the novel is full of hilarious dialogue that many teens will enjoy.\ \ \ KLIATT\ - Holley Wiseman\ Tess Whistle is a high school junior with a lot on her mind. Her parents have decided to "find themselves" in a wilderness camp, her best friend Zena Crow wants to blow up a poodle in the wake of her parents' separation, and new student Ben Easter is cute and nice. Her relationship with Ben will force Tess to learn about beginnings and endings, winning and losing. Eventually, Tess learns that sometimes to find yourself, you need to get a little lost. Kristen Tracy has written a story with familiar details for YAs: love relationships, friendships, and parental dissonance. Includes references to virginity and having sex.\ \ \ \ \ School Library JournalGr 9 & Up - Idaho teen Tess Whistle is having one weird junior year-she, her family, and her friends are all "losing it." Her parents, born again following a serious grease fire in the kitchen, take off unexpectedly to a survival camp in the Utah desert, leaving Tess with her grandmother. Tess's best friend, Zena, reacts to her parents' marital troubles by making elaborate plans to blow up a poodle. And Tess herself, who used to be 100 percent certain that she'd wait until she was married before she had sex and is deathly afraid of the wilderness, loses her virginity out of doors with her boyfriend. This book is a great read, hilarious and poignant at the same time. Teens will laugh out loud at Tess and her frank, humorous observations about the outrageous situations in which she finds herself, but they will also empathize with her feelings of not being in control of her life. They will also be heartened by the conclusion of the novel, for even though Tess is unsure of what will happen next, she has finally come to terms with the fact that life offers no guarantees, saying, "For the first time in a long time, I feel hopeful. And ready for what comes next."-Kathleen E. Gruver, Burlington County Library, Westampton, NJ\ Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information\ \