The first time a boy accidently touches your leg you are fourteen—sitting next to him in a chilly room around a dining table with three of your girlfriends for your math tuition—and a shiver runs up your spine but you aren’t sure if it is the boy’s touch or the cold room, so next week you make sure to sit next to him and deliberately touch your leg to his warm flannel-clad leg, and though no shiver runs up your spine you don’t move your leg but instead relish the heat emanating from his legs and revel in the secret that you are the only girl in the group who has touched a boy till his leg starts to shake like a tuning fork, tap, tap, tap, tap, and then he pushes back the chair and runs out of the room, and you don’t understand till much later that it was also the boy’s first time touching a girl and it was you who was in control that day when you took the warmth from a boy’s leg and made it your own.
