pink nikes in the backseat [Ellaina Powers] Junior year of high school was defined by a pair of strawberry pink Nikes, my best friend’s borrowed camera, cartoons after dark, and those three words: I had sex. She told me this over lunch one day, after the homecoming assembly had ended, and the baby fat in her cheeks had pulled up into a triumphant grin. Told me about the car and the parking lot, and the way his mouth clamped onto her neck, leeching her of her innocence and replacing it with a blurry green smudge she proudly presented like a participation award. If she hadn’t pointed it out, I wouldn’t have noticed it. Sixteen years old, a year and a half away from graduating and she was moving on without me. She’d already taken off her cap and gown and exposed herself to the first boy who paid attention, who still watched cartoons after getting home from school, who had no idea how to unclasp a bra or how to even leave a hickey. I watched her pull down the collar of her shirt to show off the stain left from that boy’s mouth, and I swallowed down the sour taste it all left on my tongue, pretending like the PB&J was enough to cover it up, like I didn’t notice the scuff marks on her pink Nikes. 65 PLAINS paradox