Read In Too Deep for Free Online Page A

and pop it into my mouth. “So where were you guys last night?”
    Logan suppresses a laugh.
    MJ kicks him under the table and the laugh dies on his lips.
    “I went to get a piercing,” MJ says in her confident throaty tone I’ve grown to like the sound of.
    I scan the parts of her I can see. She doesn’t even have earrings in. I raise my eyebrows. “Well…Did you chicken out?”
    Logan chokes on a bite of grilled salmon.
    MJ rolls her eyes. Clearly there’s something I’m missing. “I put some icing on the cupcake ,” she says.
    “Huh?”
    Logan, barely able to contain his composure, swallows a cherry tomato whole.  “She put some bling on the bikini biscuit,” he says with a smirk.
    My brain catches up with their imagery. I feel the heat traveling up my neck, coloring my cheeks. “Oh. Um…that’s…” No amount of etiquette conversations with my mother have prepared me for this moment.
    “It’s okay.” MJ says. “You don’t have to approve. Logan doesn’t.”
    “I told her not to do it,” he says.
    “That’s because you’re afraid of vaginas.”
    “I’m not afraid,” he says, but I can’t help but notice he cringes at the word. I’ve wondered about his sexuality, and it seems I’m no closer to learning the truth.
    MJ straightens her shoulders. “Listen, I’m comfortable with my body and I’ll celebrate it however I choose.”
    I like her enthusiasm. My body doesn’t incite the same type of response in me, but hey, good for her. “If you have that level of self-love, more power to ya.” I raise my ice water to her in a mock toast.
    She nods, raising a mushroom speared on her fork and bites off the tip.
    Logan goes pale.
    After lunch we head into our Global Studies class. There’s one large square table in the center of the room with ten chairs. Looks like there will be no sitting in the back row going unnoticed as I try to get my bearings.
    I follow Logan and MJ to take a seat, but as I slid e a chair out from the table, the instructor approaches me. “Taylor?”
    I nod.
    “Tate.” She offers her hand.
    I was expecting Mrs. …. something. She’s fairly young for a teacher, probably in her early twenties. Her hair is blonde with a few pink highlights and styled into a shaggy pixie cut. On anyone else, it’d be horrendous, but she’s tiny with delicate features, and somehow it suits her.
    “Hi.”
    “Go ahead and have a seat. You’re going to like it here.” She smiles warmly. She heads back to the front of the room without explaining anything else or providing me with the course materials. 
    Tate’s lecture today is on fascism in emerging nations and the tactics for disabling this type of regime. I’m so far out of my league that I understand only every fourth word. Things like: the, was, if. This feels more like advanced military training than a high school class, but the students around me hang on her every word, offering bits of color to the conversation, talking concepts out together, and occasionally asking Tate for an explanation.
    I’m too easily distracted by the large windows, through which bright afternoon sunshine pours through, warming up the room. At home, I’d be counting down the days until summer break. But here, school runs year round, with just a two-week summer break in July, two months from now.
    I see a body fall past the window and leap from my chair. All eyes in the room dart to me, like I’m the crazy one. Didn’t they see that? Logan leans toward me, placing his hand on my forearm, urging me back into my seat. “It’s just the second years rappelling off the roof.”
    Oh, ri ght. Like that’s normal. I carefully return his easy smile, and slip into my chair.
    The two hour class goes by quickly, and for the most part, it keeps my interest. I even answered a question toward the end of Tate’s lecture. She was discussing the Entanglement Theory, which says of the threads that connect everything together, one object cannot be fully described