Seventeen, a step closer to being an adult. It was kind of thrilling, no? The fun things you could now, parents out out of the way? Sure. But then there were questions. See, Jason was this particular seventeen year old. And of course, his body was growing—growing in ways that were scary to him. When he had first hit puberty, he was crying to his mom about it, but now every time he goes through those phases he just shrugs them down. Then a girl came.

Jason didn’t know it it was normal, but his body stopped and ran crazy at the sight of this girl. Why? She was another human being as he was, hopefully. She was the same age too, and she was close to him—close as in friends. That was the bad part. Jason didn’t want to be friends. He wanted more, more of her, more of just her presence. It was selfish, sure, but he was growing, remember?

And then it happened. Jason’s body went crazy one night, and he didn’t recognize this feeling. It was scary, so scary he ran to his mom like a little boy who just stole candy. His mother was understanding, she wasn’t mad—she couldn’t be. She told him what she had always told. “You’re growing.” And those words just stuck to him. He was growing…but was it right to…grow to a girl? That part he wanted to know. And again, his mother understood. Of course she did, she went through it as a woman when she was a teen.

Jason felt reassured, so he didn’t pay much attention. But one day, the girl was over. In Jason’s room, the door was shut, a little cracked even. The pair were awkwardly sitting on Jason’s bed, neither one of them speaking. Jason wanted to talk to her, talk about how pretty she was, how good she smelled, how her entire being was just taking over him—but was that weird? Maybe. But she spoke, she spoke first, and her words were…heart-throbbing. “We wanna talk about sex but we aren’t allowed.” That was true, it wasn’t allowed, not at this still young age. Sex was normal, it was something people indulged in when they were angry, sad, or just happy. But as teens? It was dangerous.