At 13 years old, Rochelle was the best built out of my group of friends in the 8th grade. Unlike Maila, Mary, Meredith, and myself, she’d ripened enough to have gazongas that more than impressed the boys.

A couple of said boys were Rob and Rod, ninth graders with a bad reputation; and thanks to middle-of-the-hood geography and the lure of teen pheromones, those bad boys somehow ended up at my house.

I’ll admit that I never liked Rod—not before then, not during, and certainly not afterwards. He’d already called my house several times, asking for my friends’ phone numbers, and had always been a real jerk about it. Not only that, but there were rumors that he took advantage of girls and tended to be forceful about it.

And now? He had the nerve to venture near my home.

As usual, the girls and I were in my open garage, dancing to the happening ’80s pop or rap music on my boom box and occasionally going inside to primp or to snack. My sister, who was 8 at the time, was in and out the door, playing with Rochelle’s younger sister or following us older girls around. When I saw Rod and his cronies across the street, I frowned. The nerve of that guy! How could I even stand to be within viewing distance of him? How could I even stand to see his face? I quickly went inside and primped.

Big mistake.

As I puttered around in my room, I heard the screen door squeak, panicked girls murmur, and the garage door move. Curious, I went out to the hall and found my friends indoors, looking out the screen door, through the garage, and at the boys standing just outside, on the driveway. My driveway. Nothing else was happening—just a lot of staring from both sides.

Since all that staring involved Rod being on my driveway, I was clearly not happy about it. I threw my frowns in the fray—making sure to show my good side, of course—and seeing my frowns, the boys migrated back across the street. Satisfied, I went back to my room to primp some more while the girls spilled into the garage again.

Second big mistake, and it was almost exactly like my first. Before I could tease my hair into its second level of ’80s bigness, the girls were back behind the screen, and the boys were just outside my garage. “Tell Rochelle to come out here,” Rod said forcefully. “Rob wants to talk to her.”

Of course. Rochelle, with the ripe gazongas and red lips, had managed to capture Rob’s attention, and Rod was taking charge.

“No way,” we all told him. Let our dear friend out among the wolves? Hell no. We stood around her in a protective shield behind our locked doors and windows, while Rochelle looked on with a longing air.

“Come on,” Rod urged. “We just want to talk with her.”

Yeah, right. Talk.

We could see Rochelle wanted to go out there. She lightly held her hand to the screen while she had that wistful somewhere-over-the-rainbow look about her eyes. As jealous as we all were at the attention she was getting, the three Ms and I were willing to lay down our lives to protect her chastity.

“Go away!” we told Rod.

Ahh, but our lips said No, and Rochelle’s eyes said Yes. She slipped through our fingers and went out to meet the boys as we wailed in protest. Noooo! The rest of us became hens in a chicken coop surrounded by fox.

“I can’t see them! Where’d they go?” We rushed here and there inside the house, seeking a window that held the view of the boys and Rochelle, but the three Rs managed to evade our gaze. “Oh, my God! What are they doing? What are they doing to her?”

Rochelle seemed to be gone quite a long time, but when she came back, she looked dazed and dreamy. Apparently, Rob had just French-kissed her, and she had hormonal stars in her eyes.

“Oh, no!” we all cried. We rushed her in, hoping to prevent any more corruption from the boys, all the while asking her what it was like to be kissed. Then for some reason the whole thing just went haywire. Before I knew it, all the girls were fleeing and squealing, running from room to room in the house as the boys outside ran from window to window, front door to back door.

I truly could not make any sense of what was going on; it was like a cartoon or some comedy sketch, where people run in one door and out the other, or exit stage left and enter stage right. Hens in a chicken coop surrounded by fox is a good analogy; hens with their heads cut off is even better.

Then, somehow, the boys got in, and that was when Pandemonium started. The squealing increased, and so did my heart rate. I was scared and angry at the intrusion; my hair was only half done, for Christ’s sake!

I ushered all the girls into my room, my sister and her friend included, and I locked the door with nary a moment to spare. The boys started banging on my bedroom door. “Come on, let us in!” Rod demanded. “Or come on out of there!”

For a while, I was too irate to answer back, until I heard a little sniffle nearby. When I realized that my sister was crying over the whole thing, I grew livid. Here we all were, in the house, with no adults present, and the whole thing was out of control. What a way to learn about the birds and the bees. “Get out of my house!” I called through the locked door.

“Not until you let Rochelle come out with us,” Rod insisted.

That did it. I swung open the door, stood with my arms akimbo, and gave them a murderous glare. “Get out of my house!” I repeated, stepping back to give them a view of my crying sister. “Look what you’re doing. You’re making her cry. Get out of my house NOW!”

“Oh, man,” the boys said, backing up and staring in shock at my sister’s tears. “We’d better go.” And just like that, they were gone.

The girls and I looked at each other, then at Rochelle. Somehow, for that afternoon, we managed to keep her chastity intact. But for how much longer?

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